Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Akechi comes back into their lives in late July, alongside an entire avalanche of Metaverse problems.

Yusuke isn’t present for either discovery, not the pocket of cognitive world around the heart of some fashion idol and not the long-lost enemy-teammate-broken mirror skulking around in there, but he gathers there was a lot of yelling. Ryuji’s voice, at least, is outright scratchy as he retells the events. Yusuke doubts Akira did any yelling, but he is unmistakably angry-quiet (distinct from regular, comfortable Akira-quiet) around Akechi for days afterwards, only unwinding once they’re on the road and the cramped sleeping arrangements reinforce Akechi’s status as a living, kicking, snoring person beyond the worst of paranoid doubt. Yusuke, who was there to hold Akira in the aftermath of Akechi’s original supposed death, and then several times later, whenever something stirred up the slumbering grief, is certain Akira’s relief far outweighs the anger, in any case.

He shares the feeling. It’s complicated – less complicated for him than some of the others, but for a few weeks in November he hated this man with a horrified passion, before that got diluted, muddled, and then overwritten almost entirely with two gunshots from behind a watertight door. He never knew Akechi enough to lose him, enough to miss him the way Akira did, but the memory of that moment has always scratched at his heart like a rusty nail, an aching sense of incompleteness. A heartbreak like waking up from a dream you wanted to see more of.

Yusuke doesn’t know if Akechi deserves the second chance, necessarily, doesn’t know how to decide who deserves that. But he knows feeling like a wasteland on poisoned soil, unable to support any life, incapable of having a future. Back in January, he thought he could see shy, tentative sprouts of greenery behind Akechi’s showing up to billiards with the team, starting conversations in the Monabus, letting Akira invite him out evening after evening.

He’s glad these sprouts weren’t, after all, crushed into non-existence upon their return from Maruki’s reality. He’s looking forward to seeing them grow.

The first night Goro sleeps in the tent – too small and too hot for four people and a cat, but his objections got overridden – he gets pinched awake at an awful hour.

Waking up early enough to have time for a meticulous morning routine used to be second nature, but he’s out of practice. Too foggy with sleep to demand to be left alone in words, he simply growls incoherently in the direction of the pinching hand, in hopes that that will be enough to convey the meaning.

Instead, it only earns him a whisper-hiss of “Dude, come on,” and a tug on his T-shirt. Goro turns around and buries his face in the shitty travel pillow. The poking doesn’t stop.

“Come on, we’re going for a run,” still under his breath. Why is other people’s sleep not to be disturbed, while Goro has to deal with this? With– great, now his fucking ear is getting tugged. “Akechi-i-i…”

Goro resigns himself to cutting his losses and sits up to glare at the annoyance. He’d really rather not murder Sakamoto, but if he has to, he figures he should at least do that outside, so he begrudgingly lets himself be pulled down the ladder before he rounds up on him.

“You have five seconds to explain why you thought–”

“Hey, I’m doing you a favor,” Sakamoto says quickly, hands raised in front of him – and then extended as if to catch something. “Oh, wait– Mona, here–”

There’s a blur of black and white from behind, and then Sakamoto stumbles under the projectile from the RV roof, but keeps his balance.

“He’s right,” Morgana says seriously, wiggling out of Sakamoto’s hands to jump to the ground safely. “You don’t want to be there for the forty minutes of morning cuddles.”

For the– Goro glances up at the tent. Oh, right, that was already a thing when he was on the team before, both times. Because of course Akira is going to land the most ethereal boy in Tokyo in between all his other feats. The fact that he’s fucking weird aside.

Whatever. Goro doesn’t see how that relates to the extra hour of sleep he really wanted. “I’m sure they can behave in company,” he posits, crossing his arms.

“Yea-ah, they’re not going to,” says Sakamoto with the certainty of someone with sleepover experience. “And anyway – they’ve been long distance for months, you know? We’d better let them have a moment.” He lightly kicks the air in front of his foot, shakes out the embarrassment of being considerate.

Isn’t everyone sweet. Absolutely adorable.

“...Okay, well, I don’t give a shit. Don’t fucking pinch me again,” Goro says, and climbs back up into the tent.

…

…He does manage to drift off for some minutes longer, but… Sakamoto wasn’t kidding, these two really have no intention to tone it down for his sake. It seems that half-awake Kitagawa is simply not aware enough of anything besides some kind of rapid-onset touch hunger, and if Akira even registers Goro’s presence (uncertain), he, apparently, doesn’t consider it more important than– squeezing Kitagawa as close as possible, and– putting his hands all over him, and– whispering something that Goro doesn’t want to listen to, and– oh god, this is so awkward.

Simply unbearably awkward. Sakamoto and the cat were right.

The next morning, Goro is out of the tent even before them, already tying his hair back when Sakamoto clambers out. It is, after all, important to keep yourself in shape. A morning run sounds like a great idea, now that he thinks about it.

“This is sho good!”

“Oh, oh, dibs on the biggest piece of crab!”

“Akira, you keep surpassing yourself with every new dish, this is divine–”

Goro shifts his weight impatiently. The hot pot does smell incredible, but he’s still off-kilter after the latest Metaverse excursion, and the commotion is grating on his nerves.

“Alright, does this have to be amateur food critic hour every time?” he snaps. “Can we just eat and get a move on?”

“Hey!” Sakamoto jabs his chopsticks in Goro’s direction. “You haven’t even tried it! This stuff deserves the hype!”

“You have not tried it?!” Kitagawa exclaims, sounding like he just learned of a great tragedy. “It’s imperative that you do!”

“I. Don’t have an appetite,” Goro says through gritted teeth.

Kitagawa does not relent. “No, I cannot stand by as you miss out on Akira’s latest masterpiece – you must allow yourself to be undone by the flavor and meatiness! Here–”

“I–” Goro tries, but before he can finish the protest, Kitagawa is in front of him with a piece of crab held up to Goro’s mouth. Goro feels a distant instinct to swat it away, but it’s somehow overpowered by how close Kitagawa is – his cloudy-night eyes pinning Goro in place, and his other hand, cupped to catch stray drops of broth, almost touching the divot between Goro’s collarbones.

Despite himself, Goro opens his mouth, slowly, mechanically, feeling like a child. Kitagawa places the food on his tongue with tender reverence to the crab, and Goro takes a careful bite before he can realize how ridiculous he looks from the outside.

He weathers the snickers from the peanut gallery with whatever remains of his dignity (“Say ‘a-ah’, Goro-chan!”) and grabs the piece of crab with his bare hands before Kitagawa can continue feeding him bite by bite.

It really is quite delicious.

Standing a bit to the side from everyone else, Akechi undoes and redoes his ponytail back and forth, an expression of anxiety much more overt than Akira has ever seen on him. He’s clearly waiting for his turn to get approached, so Akira walks up to him, waits silently to hear whatever it is he has to say.

Akechi grimaces, as if bracing himself to get through this conversation.

“Ugh.” Hair tie off, on again – one loop, two – off again. “Listen.”

The hair tie goes on his wrist. He makes eye contact, clearly despite a strong desire to avoid looking at Akira at all.

“I know this hardly means anything now, after the fact, but – I really would have turned myself in to bail you out. If it came to that. Both this time and before. I had no intention–”

“Akechi, it’s fine,” Akira interrupts. "I’m not mad you didn’t show up in February. Or– I am, but it’s not about the arrest.”

Akechi raises an eyebrow.

“All the yelling sure seemed to be about that,” he points out.

Akira ducks his head to stifle a fond smile. “Ryuji is... protective. But it all worked out back then, for me, and I don’t know if it would have for you. So I’m glad you stayed away, if anything. I just wish we didn’t– didn’t have to believe you were dead this whole time.”

Akechi looks away after all, his resolve to meet Akira’s eye going slack.

“Shouldn’t you people have been happy with that?” he asks, quietly caustic.

“You know I wasn’t,” Akira says simply and unshakably. “You know that.” For a moment, the summer breeze on their skin turns cold, biting with February chill, clenched fistfuls of coat sleeves, and hoarse-voiced arguments.

Akechi doesn’t say anything back, so maybe – Akira hopes – he does know that, on some level. He doesn’t ask where Akechi was for half a year, what he was so busy with he couldn’t let them know, but he has his suspicions. Something about Akechi’s subtle, washed-out lethargy from the beginning of the trip was… familiar. He remembers what it feels like to spend months in a haze, on autopilot, unable to hold a real conversation or perform any action that means anything at all. Remembers what it feels like for the only life you knew to fall apart under your feet.

The silence turns heavy, awkward. Akira tugs on his fringe consideringly, and then stretches his hand out, palm up.

“...What?” Akechi asks eventually, when Akira doesn’t explain the gesture.

“Where’s my souvenir?” Akira says, pouting just subtly enough to balance on the edge of teasing and mockery.

“What souvenir.”

“Everyone else had something for me,” Akira flicks his wrist, showing off the friendship bracelet, shoots a glance over his shoulder at the mask. “What do I get from you?”

Akechi looks at him flatly.

“Has to be something impressive, to make up for trying to kill me this one time and all. Two times. Bu-ut Sumire made an entire scrapbook, gonna be hard to top that...”

“I don’t have a fucking souvenir for you, Kurusu,” Akechi says, exasperated but visibly thawing, easing into the banter. “You’re just going to have to make do with a slightly smaller pile of gifts.”

“Aww,” Akira says, playing up his disappointment. “Kind of embarrassing for you, huh?” he dodges Akechi’s kick at his calf and grins.

“...How about this,” he adds, a bit more serious. “For your gift, come see me off.”

“What?”

“Don’t just vanish again as soon as we’re back to the city. Come to the station with everyone, wave at me from the platform. You were part of the team this month. Stay until the end of this chapter, at least. That’ll be my souvenir from you.”

Akechi blinks at him, eyes wide with– something. Incomprehension, maybe. Some kind of tortured gratitude. Something.

“...Fine,” is all he says in the end. “I’ll be there.”

Yusuke misses most of the parting remarks, too busy trying to cement the feeling of the warmth of Akira’s touch in his memory, somehow make it last until they are finally, eventually, reunited. The reluctance to continue the day as an incomplete group seems unanimous, everyone falling off one by one to go miss Akira by themselves or in pairs – starting with the most awkward and most unlikely addition to the send-off party. Yusuke watches Akechi’s back almost disappear into the train station crowd and realizes, with sudden clarity, how final this disappearance is going to be. Akechi’s presence on this road trip was an exception made in response to a world-ending emergency – if no other gods show up to infringe on the humanity’s collective will, which Yusuke rather hopes will be the case, none of them are likely to see Goro Akechi again, no matter how tentatively interwoven into the group dynamic his presence feels at this point.

Yusuke has had enough goodbyes for one day. He hastily waves the remaining others off and sets out to catch up, charting a determined path through the crowd.

Akechi tenses up when Yusuke falls into step next to him, but Yusuke is getting better at reading him in real time, rather than just catching a vague dissonant chord in his expression and puzzling over it for days afterwards. So now: the abruptness of the tension means it’s a sign of surprise and not genuine annoyance, and the way he tilts his head, letting his hair hide the side of his mouth, means he’s pleased and doesn’t want to show it. Yusuke smiles, content with his deductions.

“Don’t you have anyone else to spend time with?” Akechi sighs, fidgeting with a strand of his bracelet. “Did Akira put you up to this?”

“Have you ever gone people-watching, Akechi-kun?” Yusuke asks, ignoring the questions. “I wonder if your detective background would provide a unique perspective – I have a few favorite spots around the city, and if you’d be willing to accompany me today, one of them is within walking distance from here, provided you don’t mind the heat...”

He speeds up as he talks, pulling Akechi along instead of chasing after him now. Yusuke pays attention to that, to the pace of their step – it’s a subtle change, but he can tell when it evens out, settles into companionable.

For all Akechi’s spiky exterior, it doesn’t take long.

“This looks like a penguin.”

“Only because you folded the head wrong; allow me to do it properly–”

“It’s because you need actual paper for this, look at it, it’s falling apart–”

“Hey guys, I’m closing up,” Akira says, placing a quick kiss on the crown of Yusuke’s head on his way to turn the door sign around. Yusuke startles, surprised at the time.

“Oh, is it that late already?” Goro says, a little too smoothly. “And I barely did any studying…”

Lying doesn’t make his voice sound as gratingly sweet as it used to, years ago, but Yusuke still frowns at the artificial aftertaste. It does not seem worth bringing attention to, though – if Goro is avoiding his college responsibilities, Yusuke doesn’t have any room to judge, not when he’s putting his own assignments off just so he can walk with Akira after his shift. The extra moments of time together are worth the wait, but these evenings spent at Akira’s various workplaces stretch long, so he counts himself lucky that Goro has been favoring this spot for his after-class study sessions as well. Lately, whenever Yusuke comes here, he shows up too, sets out his law school homework and then ignores it in favor of discussing Ango Natsume’s comeback novel, or holding a pose Yusuke needs to reference for a sketch, or attempting napkin origami.

Now that the wait is over, they abandon the failed art project and put their things away, flip the chairs up onto tables to help Akira wrap up faster. Yusuke takes a break to frame the background with his fingers, struck with appreciation of the quiet intimacy of a normally public space now empty and dark. Most of the lights are already off, and that draws more focus to the soft glow of the streetlamps outside, illuminating slowly falling snow, like a view from inside a snow globe.

He catches Goro following his finger-frame with his eyes and directs it at him next. He looks away quickly, turning to the window instead, and then seems to get caught up in the same wonder Yusuke is taking his time noticing.

“I should pay more attention to details of seasonality,” Yusuke muses, walking up to him to watch the snowfall together. “Transmundane themes can hardly be accessed without a solid understanding of the ever shifting cycle of our environment, as well as our own relationship to it… Snow and cold, for example, are often used as a symbolic shorthand for sadness or detachment, but there is clearly a comforting aspect to them as well… Goro, how would you explore that?”

“I’m not very familiar with this kind of theme myself,” Goro says, tapping his chin in thought. “Hm… winter sports come to mind, I suppose? Not much you can do in the city but– have you ever been ice skating?”

“Oh! Oh, you’re right, that would be the perfect way to follow up on the storybook winter aesthetic! I have to dedicate a day to trying it out as soon as possible, this weekend– have you ever been?” When Goro shakes his head – “Then would you share the discovery with me?”

Goro takes a moment to answer, and his eyes flash with a flicker of some emotion Yusuke can’t immediately identify, but all he says is, “...You should probably go with Akira.”

“Naturally I hope Akira can come as well– Akira! Akira, do you have work on Sunday?”

Akira pokes his head out of the back of the coffee shop, where he’s doing some final tidying up.

“Sorry, darling, I’m booked all week. But I’ll make time later, where do you want to go?”

“Ice skating, but– it’s alright, I’ll go with Goro, he should be free on the weekend. Am I correct to assume so, or are you busy as well?”

“I’m– not busy, but–”

“Then it’s settled!”

“But this really seems like something for you and Akira,” Goro stresses again. Yusuke isn’t sure what the issue is, so he looks to Akira for a cue. Akira only smiles back – and although it seems a little stiff, that must be a play of light, because he doesn’t confirm Goro’s assertions.

“No, you can go together. It’s fine.”

Goro grinds his teeth and clashes his gaze with Akira’s like a samurai drawing his sword.

“Is it.”

Akira nods.

Goro’s voice turns cutting. “You mean you’re fine missing out on introducing Yusuke to the ‘comforting aspect of winter’ for the first time? Quite happy to spend your day at part time job number seven, by yourself, while someone else takes your boyfriend ice skating under Christmas lights?”

Akira’s jaw flexes, and Yusuke feels like he might be genuinely missing something. Is there some sort of problem he’s not aware of? A rule of romance he doesn’t know he’s breaking?

Before he can ask, Akira breaks the standoff to turn around and go lock up the staff room.

“...Yusuke, if you want to go with him, you should,” he says, still facing away from them.

“...I– I do,” Yusuke says, at a loss. “Do you not want me to–?”

“It’s fine,” Akira says again, firmly closing the lid on the argument. “You should go, then. And– I’m done, let me walk you home.”

The shadow of the unexplained conflict doesn’t taint the walk. Yusuke holds Akira’s hand on the way and kisses him on the dorm steps, and by then Akira’s sullen streak seems to pass without a trace. On Goro’s side, whatever made him so wound up about the topic, it doesn’t stop him from sending Yusuke an article on the best skating rinks in Tokyo to choose from, with notes on his own suggestions.

So it seems to really be fine, in the end.

That was probably nothing.

Chapter Text

The weather is cooperative with their plans – it’s overcast, but snowing lightly and prettily, just cold enough to set the scene. Just cold enough to make Yusuke’s pale skin turn red around the bridge of his nose, just cold enough that he arrives wearing one of the less gaudy scarves from his growing collection. This one’s light blue in a tasteful tartan pattern, and Goro hides a smile into his own scarf, indulging in the guilty pleasure of noting how they almost look like a matching set.

Yusuke’s full of enthusiasm, making comments on the ambience and the other people at the rink – other couples, largely, Goro thinks with another stab of self-indulgence. Further comments, on how movement on his rented skates is at once easier – as if the blades want to carry him forward – and more difficult, impossible to control; compares it to inspiration above one’s skill level. Goro, privately, compares it to watching a fawn learn to walk, all adorable jumble of long legs and effort.

Goro himself feels marginally competent on the ice by now, enough that he can keep the both of them from falling. He lets Yusuke hang onto his forearms and glides slowly backwards, providing a kind of human handrail to lean on while Yusuke wrangles for control over his limbs.

“I see my– my alignment with ice cannot help me here,” Yusuke says, a touch rueful. His breath is coming out in little puffs of steam, and their faces might just be close enough that the clouds brush against Goro’s skin before disappearing. He might be only imagining that, though.

“I had foolishly thought Gorokichi would somehow give me an advantage, and yet–” he stumbles, the tip of a blade catching on the ice under their feet; Goro steadies him, once again. “And yet I have to rely on your support instead.

“…How is it,” ah, here comes the question, “you are having no such trouble? Even though this is your first try as well?”

Goro can taste the excuses at the tip of his tongue – I’ve always been a fast learner! Or, I suppose the sense of balance transfers from bouldering? – but, as it often happens with Yusuke, there is a seductive compulsion to tell him the truth. To present slivers of his actual self for judgment, in a horrifying, addictive display of vulnerability, heady even when it’s about something as insignificant as this.

Goro grips Yusuke’s forearms tighter and says, “To be entirely honest, I did practice by myself beforehand.” Every free moment this entire week, at the much smaller, cheaper rink closer to his apartment, until he felt his progress worthy of this outing. “And as such, this is no longer my first try.”

“...I had wanted us learn together,” Yusuke frowns, a bit put out. Goro ignores how his heart skips a beat at ‘us together’ in the same sentence, and just says, “I find that learning is more efficient when at least one of the people involved can stand upright.” He lets go of Yusuke’s arms for a moment to illustrate his point, catches him again when he immediately starts to flail, and basks in the rush Yusuke’s conceding laugh sends through him.

This is why – I wanted to hold you steady, goes unsaid. I wanted you to depend on me.

“It is true that letting you guide me gives the experience a district thrilling edge,” Yusuke says, contemplative. “There is something compelling about the unfamiliar loss of balance, not being able to trust my own body and yet trusting yours. A sense of controlled free fall...”

“I’m glad I can be of help,” Goro chirps, and thanks his years of media experience for sounding unaffected.

They circle the edges of the rink in this manner for a while, until Yusuke declares a particular lights display the perfect backdrop for a moment of rest and leans against the railing. It is a perfect backdrop, it’s all perfect – holding onto each other, the way almost insubstantial flakes of snow dissolve on Yusuke’s eyelashes, the way the twinkling lights make his eyes shine brighter. Goro, on a high and galvanized to improve on perfection, looks around for ideas, and – oh, there is a hot drinks stand not far here, its window accessible from the rink. This will be a test of his fledgling skating skills, but he’s full of confidence at the moment, and the idea of sharing paper cups of hot chocolate at the illuminated rinkside is like something out of a dream.

“I’ll be right back,” he promises, and sets out on his quest.

The glint of festive illumination against snow is enchanting, all details coming together in service of a cohesive aesthetic. Even if it’s an unoriginal one – feel-good winter wonderland is as kitsch a theme as it gets, but well-crafted kitsch is still deserving of respect; and besides, Yusuke’s been meaning to dig into the way the presence of life breathes significance into the most boring clichés, the most mundane routines. Take this lights display: there is no deeper context to the sparkles, no artistic purpose to them besides looking generically pretty, and yet standing under them with Goro felt almost transcendent, the environment reflecting the emotional aura of the moment with extraordinary precision.

Yusuke feels the familiar tug of the desire to grab onto the insight and find a way to share it with the world. He might make use of that inspiration later – but more immediately, as always, he wants to share with just one person, and that, unlike successfully conveying his feelings through art, is much easier to achieve. Yusuke finds his phone in the pocket of his coat and presses the call button on his pinned contact.

It’s not like Goro can hear the conversation from this distance, but it’s not difficult to infer who Yusuke’s on call with, who he would be smiling like this for. Goro isn’t sure, but he thinks he can see Yusuke’s lips shape the syllables of ‘I love you’.

The cool December air suddenly finds a way under his skin, sneaks over to his heart and squeezes it frozen. The festive lights lose their coziness and become cuttingly headache-bright.

…By the time he arrives back, Yusuke’s put his phone away again, all his attention on Goro and on the paper cup in his hand.

“Is that hot chocolate you’ve tracked down? A classic winter drink to supplement our excursion! Can I have a taste?” he asks, clearly drawn to the promise of sweetness, and of warming up from the inside.

“Ah, I’d prefer that you get your own,” Goro smiles, perfectly pleasant. He knows Yusuke can’t – he’d probably fall over before he could even reach the stand, and carrying the drinks back without spilling them was a challenge even for Goro, with his transferrable balance and week of training.

He managed in the end, though. The second cup of hot chocolate, extra sweet and sprinkled with cinnamon, didn’t spill over even as it hit the bottom of a trash can.

The missed-stair snag in the mood slides off Yusuke’s determination to enjoy the ice rink experience. He’s getting more sure on his feet now, progressing from wobbling to being able to skate in a straight line in careful short steps, and Goro’s sulky downturn flakes off under the blinding, contagious delight. He finishes the last of his chocolate just in time – Yusuke’s attempting to speed up now, and that’s working out fine for him up until he has to slow back down, somehow, which he clearly doesn’t have a plan for, so Goro opens his arms to willingly get crashed into. And after that, the rip current of the absolute necessity to spend as much time with Yusuke as possible, as much as is offered, doesn’t let him stick to the rink railing.

With some more practice, Yusuke figures out how to slide to a gradual stop by rotating himself around, and that sends him into experimenting with skating in turns and zigzags; Goro follows, mirroring his moves. They’re not touching anymore, but this feels no less intimate – getting pulled along by nothing but eye contact, responding to the rhythm of the collaboration. There are, still, falls, and awkward almost-splits, and crashes into the railing and each other, but somehow none of that ruins the dance.

Eventually, the physical toll of the exertion creeps up on them. Yusuke attempts a fancy twirl on one leg, as if something from one of Sumire’s routines, and promptly loses his balance and crashes down; Goro slides closer to offer him a hand up, misjudges his speed, and ends up on his ass as well. Down on the ice now, they both find themselves reluctant to get back up – Goro’s entire body is starting to feel like jelly, and the winter air on the sweat-clammy nape of his neck is set on chasing him off the rink, away to somewhere with heating and soft surfaces.

Yusuke seems to agree. “Ah, it’s fully dark already,” he points out. “I have gathered sufficient reference on the subject of winter sports for tonight, I think. But it would be a shame to cut the evening short – shall we move on to less active pastimes? Say, dinner at yours?”

Goro wonders if the choice of location is a point of frugality, a way to bypass the question of splitting the bill – Yusuke can afford to pay for himself, these days, but spending money on anything not art-related is still clearly a fraught concept – or if it’s for his sake, if Yusuke can tell Goro’s tolerance for being around crowds of strangers is starting to thin, every passerby’s eye on him burning an itch into his skin. Either way–

“Sure,” he says gratefully, willing his limbs to solidify enough to let him get up off the ice. “That works.”

Either way, he’s just happy Yusuke doesn’t want to cut the evening short. Not even now, when Akira’s shift should be almost over.

The problem with the plan of home-cooked dinner at Goro’s is, of course, that Goro is as far from a home cook as it gets. He forgets to consider that on the way over – they’re both cold and tired, and stopping for groceries is the last thing on their minds, not that he’d know what to do with the groceries if he had them. But staring at the sad contents of his fridge makes Goro think he should have insisted on treating Yusuke to some fast food or something, after all. Is it too late to get delivery?

“I don’t– know if I actually have anything to eat here–” he starts, and is interrupted by Yusuke reaching around him into the fridge to pick up the wilty lump of cabbage.

“Nonsense, you have more than enough! What were you planning on making?”

“Uh,” Goro says.

“Then– what would you make for yourself, if you didn’t have guests over?” Yusuke asks, trying to be helpful.

“...Noodles,” Goro guesses. The idea of feeding Yusuke plain noodles – maybe with an egg on top, if he’s feeling indulgent – is repulsive. “But that’s hardly a proper dinner–”

“Then let us make noodles!” Yusuke declares, picking up more items from the fridge. “If you’ll allow me to add some embellishments, I’m certain the humble noodle bowl will blossom into a true beauty. Although we can’t achieve proper artistic novelty with these limited materials–” …that might be for the best, “famished as I am, I shall be quite content with unexciting sustenance. Did I see carrots in there? Wonderful–”

Goro shifts his weight in embarrassment. Yusuke seems to know what he’s doing, but they’re in Goro’s apartment, and he’s supposed to be the host. “Doesn’t feel right to make you cook, though,” he mutters.

Yusuke looks at him from where he’s setting his items down on the counter. A strand of hair falls into his face, a little frizzy after getting snow-wet and then drying out.

“I’m happy to,” he says easily. “I would like you to depend on me in turn.”

Goro swallows a small noise in the back of his throat, gulps it down before it can escape.

“But we can cook together,” Yusuke suggests, oblivious. “Here, you can start on the vegetables.”

Goro walks over obediently and gets to work on shredding the cabbage, while Yusuke searches his cabinets and picks out an assortment of spices and condiments to mix into a sauce.

“You’re good at this,” Goro remarks quietly, careful not to disturb the warm, domestic moment. He puts the prepared vegetables aside; the next object in the pile in front of him is a bulb of garlic. Goro moves on to peeling the cloves.

“The versatility of simple ingredients can be a soul-saving font of daily joy,” Yusuke says, in a similar soft cadence. “But I confess I only started really paying attention– hold on, there’s a more efficient way to handle this, let me…”

Goro’s body locks into flustered stasis as Yusuke takes a garlic clove out of his hand, places it on the cutting board instead. He’s reaching under Goro’s arms to do that, standing so close he can lean his chin down on Goro’s shoulder, so close Goro can smell his shampoo and a hint of an undefinable personal scent.

Yusuke smashes the garlic clove with the flat of the knife. Shows Goro how easily the shell comes off now, hands him the knife to try it himself on the next one.

“–But I only started really paying attention,” he continues his train of thought, still lingering in the half-hug position, “after Akira’s love for the craft showed me its true hidden value. The act of making food becomes something precious when–”

Goro stops listening, the rush of blood in his ears covering up the accolades. Of course, of course Yusuke takes naturally to sharing a kitchen with someone, of course he’s used to this sort of casual intimacy, of course– of course the affection is misplaced, misaddressed by distracted force of habit–

Something snaps. Goro drops the knife, drops the garlic, and swivels around to grab a fistful of Yusuke’s sweater instead.

Yusuke barely has time to make sense of anything as the world spins around him, and the next moment his back is pressed against the counter, the edge of it digging uncomfortably into his hips, and Goro’s lips are on his.

It’s a rushed, desperate approximation of a kiss. There is a charge to it, an electric sparkle of potential– but Yusuke does not part his own lips in response, and the spark dulls into a sad hunger, something pleading in the way it peters out into a chain of increasingly weaker attempts.

When the final of them ends with Goro giving up and pulling away, for a split second he looks dazed, and so visibly devastated that Yusuke almost reaches for him, despite his confusion. Before he can try, Goro’s expression shutters into something darkly, dangerously resigned instead, and he pulls Yusuke close first, into another kiss.

This time there is no softness in it. Goro’s hand fists into Yusuke’s hair, holding him in place while he crashes their mouths together with unpleasant, vindictive insistence. Yusuke, used to mutually enthusiastic kisses, careful and joyful like a dance, freezes under the assault. His mouth yields to Goro’s tongue as it bullies its way in, wraps around his own and explores, claiming as much as it can while Yusuke’s shocked into helpless stillness.

The spell of paralysis only breaks when Goro’s teeth catch on his lip, and the sting of pain finally brings back his ability to react. Yusuke shoves Goro away, hard, and brings the back of his hand to his lips, as if he could rub the stain off.

“What,” he hisses with breathless dismay, “are you doing.”

Goro’s eyes narrow, and he moves closer again, crowding Yusuke against the counter.

“Taking the lead. Why shouldn’t I?” he says, his tone chiming with scorn. “You like guidance, don’t you? Does it really matter that much who holds your leash?”

Yusuke gasps a vague protest, but Goro only doubles down, a manic energy gathering around his words. “Oh, don’t deny it! Akira, Akira, Akira, you can’t last ten minutes without bringing up Akira, but all you really want is someone, anyone to latch onto and build your life around. If he weren’t at the right place, at the right time, you’d fall into someone else’s arms just as easily; I’m only showing you–” he lifts his hand to Yusuke’s face, tilts his chin with a careless touch that holds nothing but condescension.

Yusuke slaps it away and grabs Goro’s wrist, holding it in the air with a steely grip. Goro’s eyes are still clouded with the shield of disdain, and staring into them doesn’t bring Yusuke any closer to an explanation, but at least his gaze shames Goro into silence.

“...Do you truly want to continue that thought?” Yusuke asks, shaky and measured at once. “And do you truly feel entitled to this kind of touch?”

He lets go of Goro’s wrist so he can see his answer. The hand trembles in the air for a moment, and then falls aside as Goro slams his elbows down on the counter next to Yusuke, hides his face in his hands.

“Go,” he says, muffled. “Can you just– please just go.”

Yusuke watches his slumped form for a little while longer, still hurt and blindsided by the turn their evening took. But it’s clear no resolution is available right now, and so he does leave, puts his coat and boots on and closes the door softly on his way out.

After a minute, there is a loud clatter from behind it, as though cooking utensils have been sent crashing to the ground in frustration.

Yusuke stays on the balcony outside Goro’s apartment for a while longer, struggling to feel like himself again. Goro lashing out and saying something hurtful is– not a big deal, and certainly not news. They used to clash all the time, back when Goro would bristle defensively at the slightest provocation, eager to ruin tentative friendships on his terms before they get taken away. Ann or Futaba could shut him down with a well-timed quip in seconds, but Yusuke was never the best at that – it’s too easy for him to take Goro seriously.

He wasn’t ready for a stunt of this kind today, not after years of smoother sailing, and taking this topic seriously is… unsettling. Yes, Goro was, most likely, blindly striking at a weak point – but what if there is a grain of truth to his words?

The possibility scratches at Yusuke’s ribs like barbed wire. He hates what that would imply about him, about his relationship with Akira; hates himself for having to doubt it.

He doesn’t want to be alone with this. All he wants is to see Akira. He wonders, grimly, if that is damning in itself.

He goes to Akira’s anyway, after all. The way his heart unwinds when he even just approaches Akira’s street helps already. Surely this– this feeling of home, this thrum in his chest when he looks up and finds Akira’s window, its light somehow warmer and more inviting than any of the identical windows around it– surely this cannot be simply coincidental.

Akira meets him at the door, warned of his coming beforehand with a quick text. Morgana weaves a figure eight around his legs in greeting – he’s grown more comfortable with cat mannerisms lately, finally more secure in his unique existence. This feels right, the way it always does.

And yet Yusuke doesn’t return Akira’s kiss on the cheek, still unsure if he deserves to. Akira pauses for a moment, but all he says as Yusuke hangs his coat is the habitual, expected, “Hi. Have you eaten?”

“We got leftovers!” Ryuji’s voice shouts out from his own room. “Hi Yusuke!”

“Hello,” Yusuke says, distracted. “I– I don’t feel like eating, thank you.”

Akira blinks at him, alarmed. When Yusuke doesn’t manage to find his words right away, he takes him by the hand into his bedroom, closes the door behind them for some privacy. Yusuke sits down on the bed and wrings his hands.

“Akira, do you think– do I rely on you too much? That is–”

Akira sits next to him, a steadying presence – but is Yusuke’s desire to fold into his embrace and away from difficult thoughts part of the problem?

“I am… concerned if… am I capable of independence? Could I even function, could I exist if I didn’t have a place by your side?”

Despite his fears, he reaches for Akira’s hand – and Akira withdraws it.

“...What is this about?” he asks, expression hidden in the shadow of his bangs.

Yusuke makes a frustrated noise, thinking back to the ugly scene. “Alright,” he rubs his temple. “Let me unravel this in order. I had a marvelous time at the rink with Goro, and then we went to his apartment to warm up and eat, and then–” Yusuke falters, unsure how to explain Goro’s actions when he doesn’t understand them himself. “And then he– kissed me…?”

He turns to Akira for help with understanding, or at least for camaraderie in bafflement, but Akira isn’t looking at him.

“I see,” he says, addressing an empty patch of floor. Gets up from the bed and walks away entirely, stands at the window instead, gripping the windowsill. “Fucking knew this was a matter of time.” His voice sounds strained in a way Yusuke hasn’t heard– ever, actually. “Good for you, I suppose.”

…What?

“What…?” Yusuke asks out loud.

“...Oh, come on,” Akira replies bitterly. “It’s not like I can’t see you’re in love with him.”

Yusuke’s brain screeches to a halt. Akira takes note of his expression, and lets out a short, acerbic huff.

“...You didn’t even know. Sorry. But– you are.”

“...I think I’d know if I were in love with someone,” Yusuke protests, latching onto the easiest objection.

“Did you, with me?” Akira asks. “Before we started dating? Because I distinctly remember having to break the news to you back then, too.”

That. Is a good point. “Well– alright, I couldn’t put it in those words, at the time,” Yusuke admits. “But I knew I felt a pull towards you always, knew that no amount of time spent together was enough; I knew that any hints of your touch made me crave more, and that I wanted to share every experience in my life with you, and that…” he falters. Examining these points in his mind, none of them seem conclusively inapplicable to Akira’s preposterous theory.

Yusuke changes approaches. “Either way – it makes no sense for me to be in love with Goro. Not when I’m already in love with you.”

Akira turns around.

“Are you?” he asks, something between accusatory and vulnerable.

“Of course I am, how is that even a question? My love for you lives in my bones, I can’t even imagine–” Yusuke stumbles, reminded of his original worry. Still, he means this. Not loving Akira is an incomprehensible thought.

“Weren’t you doubting that before?” Akira says, his voice on the edge of a tremble.

“What? That was never in doubt,” Yusuke replies immediately, scandalized.

Akira takes a halting step forward, then another. Comes back and sits next to Yusuke again.

“...What was, then? Why were you– asking those things?”

Yusuke takes a deep breath. Finds the thread of self-doubt that brought him here.

“I’m afraid for the– well, the purity of my affections,” he says quietly, ashamed of himself. “Whether my love for you is properly cultivated, properly centered on the wonder that you are, and not simply… a weakness of my character, so desperate for guidance that I cannot do anything without a…” he grimaces, “a hand on my leash, apparently.”

Akira’s face is set in a way that suggests anger, now, more than hurt.

“What did Akechi say to you?” he asks flatly.

Yusuke blinks in surprise at the last name. “He was simply– being unpleasant, the way he gets. He’s ashamed of it now, I’m sure. But– a stopped clock is right twice a day. What if, what if he’s correct to point out how… how I fell for you at a time when I was aching for structure, for supervision more than partnership?

“…Is that not unfair to you?”

Akira holds both of his hands in his. Neither of them seem to want to lean out of the touch anymore.

“Even if – if – that is true. That was years ago, darling. Do you feel the same way now?”

Yusuke thinks about it. “...It’s not a secret I like it when you,” he can feel the tips of his ears start to burn, “when you get, ah, controlling with me– when–”

Akira flushes as well. “That’s only for– you know. That doesn’t count. For anything important, anything that matters, would you really want or, or accept me telling you what to do?”

Yusuke tilts his head. “You wouldn’t, though. When I’m not sure about something, you always help me figure out what I want, rather than imposing your will.”

Ah. Maybe that is the answer.

“And I trust you to treat me thus,” he says slowly. “And I hope– I strive to extend the same to you in return. That… that is partnership, isn’t it?”

Akira nods, a small smile breaking through. Yusuke leans forward and kisses him, softly, helpless to resist the buoyancy in his chest.

They lean their foreheads against each other afterwards, finding their way back to balance.

Yusuke’s stomach growls.

“Leftovers,” Akira reminds him, a smile in his voice.

“...In a minute,” Yusuke says, and kisses him again.

“So, can I chew Goro out?” Akira asks, while Yusuke’s busy shoveling rice into his mouth. “For being mean.”

“What’d he do?” Morgana asks from his place in Akira’s lap.

Akira winces. “...Trying to freak us out of liking him again,” is the summary he settles on.

“What was that?” Yusuke asks, still bewildered. “For the life of me, I can’t figure out what set him off.”

“...You can’t?” Akira asks, weirdly guarded. Yusuke shakes his head.

“...No idea, then,” Akira says, looking away. “He’ll have to tell you himself, someday.”

Yusuke doesn’t particularly want to come back to the topic, but his conscience wouldn’t let him leave it alone.

“Do you really believe I am… being unfaithful to you?” he asks quietly, after Morgana slinks out of the window for his nightly walk.

Akira flips around to press his face into the pillow.

“Not like that,” he says, muffled. “I know you’re not doing anything wrong. So– don’t worry about it.” He turns back to his side. “I’m sorry– I’m really sorry I snapped earlier, actually. You were upset, and I… I only cared about my hurt feelings. Sorry.”

“...I care about your feelings too, though. If I’m hurting you– I need to know, love.”

“It’s not your fault,” Akira says.

“...Even then. Even unwittingly, I don’t want to cause you heartache. Have I been?” Silence. “Akira. Have I?”

“Well, what is there to do about it, though?” Akira blurts out, propping himself up on one hand. “I can’t tell you to stop seeing him, I wouldn’t do that. Hell, I don’t want to stop being friends with him, even, despite his best efforts. And you can’t control how you feel.”

Yusuke still doesn’t know what to think about how he feels. “I love you,” he reiterates, because this he’s sure of. “I want to be good to you. Can you think of anything that would make you feel more certain of that…?”

Akira scoots closer. Hides his face in Yusuke’s shoulder, as if charging himself up.

“Well,” he attempts. “Can you just– try to be less… outwardly romantic? With people who are not me?”

Is he doing that? What does that even mean? “Can you give me an example…?” Yusuke asks, fishing for clarity.

Akira makes a strained noise. “Okay – today! Yusuke, that was, basically, a date.”

“...What makes it a date if we’re not dating?”

“Just– everything! Ice skating is romantic! I bet you held hands the whole time! And, and it’s Christmas!”

“...It’s December 22nd?”

“Almost Christmas,” Akira says, sulkily. “Couples’ holiday.”

“I know that much, but– doesn’t ‘almost Christmas’ mean it isn’t Christmas…?”

“Ugh,” Akira says, and Yusuke feels guilty for getting stuck on details.

“...I apologize,” he says. “I’m afraid I am still, to this day, not well-versed in the trappings of romance. But– I promise I will try to be more vigilant.”

“...Thank you,” Akira says with a wan smile. “Don’t worry too much, though, really.

“It’s not something you can force, anyway.”

Chapter Text

Goro shows up looking aggressively skittish – like a small dog afraid of you and about to bite your ankles about it – but he does show up, which is a win. Skittish is better than smug or something along those lines, anyway. Akira still wants to sock him in the jaw a little. Doesn’t, because that’s entirely unproductive, and also because that would kind of be letting him win. Asshole.

“701?” he asks, setting his backpack down. Morgana-less backpack, this time – some conversations are personal.

“I– sure,” Goro says uncertainly. Twirls the dart in his hand for a while before even trying to aim. When he does throw, it veers immediately off course, lands on a pathetic single-digit section.

The next one isn’t much better.

“Get on with it,” Goro finally grumbles as he readies his third try. “What is this, a shovel talk? ‘Don’t ever speak to him again’, or what?”

Single digit again. Akira picks up his darts. At the very least, there is a kind of mean, private satisfaction to be felt about Goro’s apparent absolute certainty that Yusuke doesn’t keep secrets from him.

“Not unless you manage to make him hate you,” he says, and throws. 20 – missed, but doing better than Goro’s turn. “Which I hope you don’t, for the record. But– yeah, you sure crossed a line.”

Triple 5. Damn it.

“Clearly you don’t need to feel threatened, though,” Goro says through clenched teeth.

…Debatable, but not what he’s here to talk about. “Not the point. Point is, you were being a dick about it.”

No need to feel threatened is interesting. The dart lands on an 8.

“Maybe,” Goro says, and starts his turn without looking at the board, “if you didn’t insist on serving him up on a fucking platter for me–”

“Being a dick again,” Akira says mildly. While Goro takes the time to properly aim, this time, he elaborates. “Don’t talk about him as if he’s mine to give away. If I thought you really believed that– but I know you do respect him as a person of his own. Act like it.”

Goro is quiet for the rest of his turn. Neither of his remaining darts gets to the bullseye.

“Deal with your… thing about Yusuke properly. Or don’t, none of my business,” Akira says, just a little bit chipped. He does manage a triple 20 this time, finally. “But if you take a swing at his self-worth again, I’ll, I don’t know.” He pretends he was aiming for that triple 18. “Kick you out of the group chat, for starters.”

Goro snorts humorlessly. Akira holds onto the last dart, waiting for a response.

“...I get it,” Goro says quietly. “I– that was shitty. I’ll… apologize, I suppose. If that’s even welcome.”

Akira throws, aiming half-heartedly at the bullseye and landing on a 4.

“Good,” he says. “And it is, I’m pretty sure.” He feels a smirk pull on his lips, taking his revenge in the knowledge that the acceptance unsettles Goro more than any reprimand would. “You should know by now none of us are that easy to get rid of.”

Goro stares at him with a pinched look on his face and says nothing. He wants to, Akira can tell – to argue or scoff, or deny he cares, but in the end he only looks down and says nothing.

Progress, it seems like. For all Akira’s current annoyance with this guy, being accepted back, in whatever kind of roundabout way, still makes his heart swell with familiar vindicated affection.

When Goro turns back to the board, eventually, he sighs at the score.

“Well, this is unwinnable,” he points out.

“M-m,” Akira winces at the tragic numbers.

A half-formed thought occurs to him. Usually, they’d have built their shared score up by this point...

“...Only because we were playing against each other.”

“That’s the point of the game, genius.”

“Is it?” Akira muses, rhetorically.

Not really, isn’t it?

He watches Goro throw his darts at the board at random, finishing at not even close to 701.

A beat.

Akira stretches. “So. Another round, then?”

Goro stiffens. Bites his lip surreptitiously, stifling the nervous tick.

“I thought we were done. Talking,” he says, carefully neutral.

“We are. I wanna play more, though,” Akira shrugs.

Goro blinks at him in strained, confused silence.

Akira bumps their shoulders together, lightly. “I want to play darts with you.”

For a second, Goro’s blank expression ripples, and he looks away quickly to hide the glimpse of the one behind it.

…They play four more rounds.

“Billiards, next time,” Akira says, on the way back to the station.

Goro tilts his head, and his hair falls to cover the side of his face.

‘I apologize for my conduct the other day,’ says the text. ‘It was a cruel whim, and inexcusable. You should know I was only taking a bad mood out on you, and there was no substance to my accusations – they are far from my true opinions. I think of your authentic self-definition highly, and know your romantic relationship is not in contradiction with that. I take back everything I said, and did, and I would be grateful if we could forget this ever happened.’

Yusuke sighs and leans his head back against the wall, sitting on the floor of the studio he shares with a couple other people from his year. The apology is unobjectionable, and he’s glad for the opportunity to close the door on the incident and leave it in the past.

‘A cruel whim’ bounces around his thoughts, like a bullet ricocheting.

Maybe Akira was right, after all, with his assumptions. And in that case, it seems that whatever infatuation Yusuke has been unknowingly harboring is apparent to its object as well, enough to mock him for it so.

Yusuke feels– twitchy. Too hollow, somehow, as if his veins are full of air.

He should be glad that Goro wants to take it back. The moment was– unpalatable, off-putting. Not something he wants to keep either.

And yet– if it had been only a little different–

What does he imagine by ‘different’? He thinks about first kisses. If Goro had been gentle about it… If he’d asked, beforehand, ‘Can I kiss you now?’ – smooth and confident, with only a hint of nervousness weaving through the words – if he’d held Yusuke’s hand and waited for his small, mesmerized nod, and moved his mask aside–

No. This feels– sacrilegious.

Whether Goro regrets the wrongness of the kiss or the very fact, that doesn’t need to matter. It needs to not matter, in fact, if Yusuke wants to clean up his boyfriend act sometime this century.

He types back, ‘Apology accepted,’ and puts his phone away for the rest of the day. Closes the door, forgets this ever happened, paints it over.

Tries to, in any case.

The invite notification was such a major relief, Goro couldn’t help a little victorious hiss.

Yusuke has been… avoiding him, the past month. Not pointedly, not in any way that would suggest a grudge, but they kept coincidentally just missing each other in person, even though communication over text remained available.

At first, he thought it a blessing in disguise. A detox may be just what he needs – some time away from Yusuke and his delicate features, and his deep and refreshing voice, and his cloyingly perfect relationship. Maybe the bit of distance would make the empty tug in his chest recede, die out now that Goro is not feeding it new material.

Instead, it gets worse. Deprived of Yusuke’s company in reality, his mind doubles the obsession with the idea of him, infuses every waking moment with personalized loneliness. By the middle of January, Goro would sit through four hours of Yusuke gazing into Akira’s eyes if it only meant he got to be in the same room as him.

And now he has the chance. Goro gathers his self-control and pushes the door to Leblanc open.

He is, of course, immediately tested – those two are the only ones here, so far, and they seem to be in the middle of a private kind of countdown.

“Eighteen,” Akira says, in between kissing Yusuke against the bar counter, “Nineteen,” another kiss, “A-and twenty!” – a longer, drawn out one. Goro coughs.

“Oh,” Akira makes a show of noticing him – Goro doubts the authenticity of that, but. Fair. “Hi. You’re early.”

Yusuke’s pleasantly flushed glow doesn’t dim at the interruption, at least, which helps Goro’s tension a little. If Yusuke is not unhappy to see him, this is all salvageable.

“I brought snacks,” he says, lifting up the bag with his share of supplies, and relaxes a bit more when the attention moves seamlessly on to that.

It’s not that Akira’s eavesdropping – he was just getting something from the kitchen, and simply decided to linger there a bit longer when he saw the flicker of chestnut in his peripheral vision.

“So… happy birthday,” Goro says from over at the counter, presumably perched on the stool next to Yusuke’s. Akira opens the fridge. Very interesting, the fridge is.

“Thank you for thinking of me,” Yusuke sounds curious, more than anything. There’s a shuffle of– paper? Not wrapping paper, something thicker. An envelope? Then a pause – for examining the gift, probably.

“Camellia ryokan– two-night stay– oh! What an inspired idea for a present, gifting an experience rather than material possessions!”

“...I’m very happy you like it.”

“But naturally – how could I not love the promise of a rejuvenating vacation together, among beautiful views of nature, complete with– does this say seasonal dinner menus? Indelibly enticing…”

‘Vacation together’ – two tickets, then. A peace offering. Akira picks some appetizer supplies from the fridge and feels his tension thaw out. A weekend at an onsen together does sound great, and more so with how taken Yusuke seems with the idea of a romantic getaway.

He steals a glance behind him, assembling his tray– Yusuke looks to be considering a brochure more closely, a hint of a frown on his face.

“...On second thought,” he says regretfully, “I don’t think I can accept this, much as I appreciate the gesture.”

“What– why not?” Goro splutters. “These are open-date, so you don’t need to worry about the exam season or anything–”

“...It’s not that. I am… given pause by the mention of a private onsen, and especially in combination with the visual language of this brochure… Going somewhere like this with you might, I realize now, have certain connotations that I am learning to recognize and avoid, for the sake of protecting the exclusivity of a treasured relationship…”

Akira’s jaw locks up. Ah. That’s what the excitement was for. Figures.

Goro takes a sharp, wounded exhale, clearly audible even from the kitchen. “...For you and Akira,” he says weakly. “The tickets. Were supposed to be. Intended. Meant for.”

Yusuke gasps in understanding. “I see! Right, in that case there is no issue, after all. Oh, but what proficiency in gift selection! I can’t think of anything I’d desire more than a backdrop for more memories with my beloved– speaking of, where is he? Akira? Akira, come see what Goro got for us!”

Akira takes a deep breath and emerges from the kitchen. He is not going to make a scene, not while Goro is being so infuriatingly mature about this. He’s going to be chill.

Luckily, if there are any cracks in his composure, Yusuke is easy to distract with the appetizer tray, and Goro has his TV-ready smile on, which almost definitely means he’s this close to bashing his own head against the counter. Neither of them seems to take any note of the undercurrent of bitterness in Akira’s tone when he asks, “Am I included in the present?”

“Only makes sense,” Yusuke says, and reaches around Akira’s waist to pull him closer, leans his head on his shoulder. “To receive shared birthday presents, with our souls as entwined as they are. Which, itself, is the greatest gift I have been bestowed in this life.”

…Well.

After that, holding onto jealousy feels downright silly.

Akira looks lovely in his yukata, fresh-faced after the bath, his hair curling in waves that look somehow more whimsical than the usual tangle. Yusuke reaches for the bag with his sketchbook, intent on pinning down the difference. Akira plops down on the futon, meanwhile.

“This is so-o much better than the bathhouse in Yongen,” he purrs, languid.

“It’s absolutely luxurious here,” Yusuke agrees. “I owe Goro another thanks.”

It’s minute – Yusuke wouldn’t have noticed if he weren’t in life sketching mode, acutely attentive to every line of Akira’s body – but a sliver of his boneless relaxation evaporates into the air.

“Mhm,” he says noncommittally. There is a long beat of silence – Yusuke assumes the conversation is over, for now, and focuses on drawing.

“...You wanted to come here with him,” Akira says, not quite a question.

Yusuke, busy measuring the distracting distance from Akira’s chin to the loose collar of his yukata, answers without thinking. “The thought did cross my mind. But that was only a misunderstanding, a rash assumption that his gift was intended as an invitation rather than–”

“But you wanted to,” Akira interrupts. “Do you… even now, do you wish you were here with him?”

Yusuke takes a moment to imagine that, add Goro to every memory from the day – soaking in the hot spring, sharing a drink over the sumptuous traditional dinner, playing shiritori on the train ride.

“It would certainly be appealing, wouldn’t it? He spends so much of his time in a state of high-strung tension, it does make one want to drag him into a mellower context, see if that makes his personality bloom into rarely seen colors… And what better place for that than here, away from the city and free from the demands of daily life, free even from the shackles of clothing once you enter the water!”

Yusuke feels like he’s forgetting something about this line of thought, something that should hold him back from pursuing it further, but the mental image is too alluring to resist.

“Yes, I would dearly like to see him that way… The scene is clear in my mind’s eye, down to the sheen of droplets of steam gathering in the groove of his shoulder, the subdued illumination of the room reflecting in his eyes–”

“Yeah, I get it!” Akira snaps out, terse. “You can– you can stop describing it now.”

Yusuke stops in his tracks, brought out of the daydream. Now that he’s back to the present, back to Akira, it dawns on him rapidly that he’s upset him again. Too little too late, he remembers why the topic was supposed to be off limits.

Akira sits up and turns away from him, fists his hands in the covers. Yusuke’s face burns with shame over his lack of consideration, lack of understanding of lines drawn in the sand around vulnerabilities of romance.

“I’m sorry,” he says haltingly. “It’s only– you asked…”

“Shouldn’t have,” Akira agrees in a wooden voice.

They sit in excruciating silence for a stretch of time.

“Do you even want me here?” Akira asks, all in one breath.

“Of course I do…”

“Why?”

“What sort of question– I love you?”

Akira exhales with a force.

“...Sure,” he says, unconvincedly. Yusuke feels like breathing has just become more difficult.

“I– do you not believe me?” he asks, alarm flooding his entire being. “Akira, you can’t doubt that– that is one of the most fundamental truths of my existence, has been, in some way, ever since we met–”

“...Yeah. Since we met,” Akira says quietly.

“Since you changed my life,” Yusuke adds. “You and everyone.”

Akira makes a vague noise of acknowledgement, and it sounds even less reassured than before. Yusuke feels… lost.

He hasn’t had to face this feeling with Akira before, the nagging certainty that there is an expectation of the correct thing to say, to do, that everybody knows but him. A test he tends to fail every time. He doesn’t usually afford it much space in his thoughts, the familiar sting of rejection far down the list of his priorities…

From Akira, it makes him want to cry.

“Akira, what can I do?” he pleads, scooting closer but not daring to touch. “To make it better, to make up for whatever has made you lose your faith in me?”

Akira is staring at the covers, so hard Yusuke half expects them to catch fire. Maybe if that happened, he could throw himself into the flame, prove the truth of his feelings in that way.

“It’s not like I’m angry with you,” Akira says, hollow. “There’s nothing– oh.”

He breaks off as he looks up in the middle of his sentence, lifts his eyes from the ground and to Yusuke’s face – and it seems that something there brings him up short. Akira’s own expression breaks.

“Oh, darling, I’m sorry,” he breathes out and scrambles closer to Yusuke, cups his face with his hands. Yusuke gasps in relief at the physical contact. “I wasn’t going to bring this up at all, and here I go interrupting our vacation– don’t mind me. I’m… I’m being unreasonable, that’s all.”

“I love you,” Yusuke whispers, shaky with the urgency of confirming that Akira agrees.

“I know,” Akira says quickly and leans in for an emphatic kiss. “I know. …I love you too,” he adds, like an obvious afterthought. Yusuke feels a childish, irrational stab of offense at the way that is not in doubt.

They hold onto each other, trusting the desperate closeness of their bodies to convey what words failed to. Yusuke presses his face into Akira’s shoulder, inhales the warm, familiar smell.

“...Sorry I’m ruining the trip,” Akira says guiltily. “Want to go back to the baths? The communal ones are still open.”

“Do you want to?” Yusuke asks, leaning back to look at him. He needs to start thinking about Akira’s wants and needs more, evidently. He silently resolves to try harder.

“...Yeah,” Akira says. “I really should… I should enjoy the time with you that I have.”

There is something off about that phrasing, but… Yusuke doesn’t have it in himself to bring attention to it, not right now.

He… he just needs to try harder. He’s going to try harder.

“Alright, one more point. The students who are submitting their work to the bird-and-flower competition – that would be… Kitagawa-kun, in this group – please clear your schedule for next Saturday, 2 pm, the committee will be hearing your final presentations…”

Yusuke absent-mindedly notes down the date and time, as a reminder for himself. Next Saturday, so soon – but he’s almost done with the triptych by now, anyway, and it might be for the best to have a hard deadline on any further adjustments– oh. Oh, hold on.

Next Saturday…

Yusuke stands up abruptly and bows his head. “Sensei– is my presence at the presentation mandatory? Would it be possible to let the work speak for itself?”

“I– ahm,” the professor fixes his glasses, buying himself time to get over his startlement. “Mandatory, yes. This is a serious event, they’ll want to hear about everyone’s process and creative vision before they make any decisions. In addition, attendance shows simple respect of the jury’s time…”

Yusuke thinks for just a moment. “I understand. In that case, I’m withdrawing my submission.”

Yusuke’s professor blinks at him. Fixes his glasses again.

“Are you quite sure, Kitagawa-kun? I’ve seen your work for this competition, and in my personal opinion, you have very solid chances of winning – and you’ve spent weeks on this now, if not months… Is it a scheduling conflict? What could be important enough to miss out on this opportunity?”

“I assure you, it’s something deeply important to me,” Yusuke says, his tone final. “I apologize for the late notice.”

He sits back down. The professor hesitates a moment longer and then elects to accept this, moving on to dismissing the class. Yusuke mulls over the ease with which he made this decision.

It… makes him happy, he realizes. He’s proud of the triptych, and was genuinely looking forward to unveiling it to be judged and to possibly, hopefully winning some recognition for his art on its own merit, with no mention of his contentious past ties. And yet– and yet he’s not conflicted about dropping out.

There are things as important to him as art. The thought feels almost too big to hold, almost too daring, but he knows that it’s true.

It makes him happy. Whatever fear of betraying his life’s purpose, his mother’s legacy, that he could potentially feel slides off his calm certainty that his other loves only make his love for art grow stronger, richer, more complex. There is a sharp sense of relief at not having to divide or portion out his capacity to care – it’s all parts of the same whole, beating in harmony in his chest.

The sacrifice of missing a competition is nothing compared to the font of strength that springs from the revelation.

And, besides, either way: there is the resolution he’s made to himself. This, Yusuke thinks, is part of trying harder.

Yusuke watches the blooming park trees through a finger-frame, and Akira watches him. Every time they’re near each other, he finds himself drinking down his darling’s presence like a man parched, even though he’s hardly starved of it. Especially these days – they have been together a lot, recently. Maybe even too much; there is something disconcerting in the way Yusuke’s deadlines have been mysteriously moving themselves aside to make way for coffee dates and overnight visits, in the shadows under his eyes afterwards.

It’s too nice here and now to think about those worries, though. The spring sun warms their skin and gives the newly open flowers a vibrant glow, making the park look like a dreamy painting. Surprising, actually, that Yusuke isn’t on that.

“No sketchbook today?” Akira asks from his lounge.

Yusuke performs an exaggerated shudder. “I need a break from flower themes, and for a while, I think. You know how many drafts I went through for that triptych…”

Akira nods. “Yeah, the birds and bees. Flowers. How’s that going? Have you finished the final prints yet?”

“Ah, I dropped out of the competition in the end,” Yusuke says matter-of-factly, and reaches for another sandwich.

Akira gets a bad feeling.

“...Why, though? You have been putting so much effort into those, and you’ve said the pieces were coming along well…?”

“I’m quite happy with them, yes, but,” Yusuke says around a mouthful of strawberry cream, “there was a scheduling conflict with the presentation, and my other plans had to take precedence.”

“What other plans,” Akira asks in a detached voice. He’s pretty sure he knows the answer.

Yusuke makes a wide gesture, encompassing the blooming trees, the snacks and the thermos of coffee on their blanket, and Akira. “Spending time with you, of course.”

That’s what Akira was afraid of. This feels like the cherry on top of all of Yusuke’s subtly out of character decisions in the past month.

“Yusuke,” he says, in a tone that would be angry if he could manage that, but that comes out closer to helpless instead, “you really didn’t need to do that.”

Yusuke tilts his head, bird-like. “I wanted to.”

Wanted to appease Akira, maybe. Or, a nasty voice from the back of his mind suggests, to overcompensate for his heart wavering. For the loss of the effortless devotion that seems to be slipping through their fingers, these days.

“You shouldn’t,” Akira says forcefully. “You shouldn’t make time for me when I know you’re busy, and you shouldn’t always pick what you think I’d like when we go out, and you certainly shouldn’t sabotage your art career like this for, for–” Akira almost chokes on his words, but forces them out, nevertheless.

“For a relationship that’s not going to work out anyway.”

…He knows, immediately, with devastating certainty, that this was the wrong thing to say.

“–for a relationship that’s not going to work out anyway.”

Yusuke doesn’t notice that he drops his sandwich.

“Why,” he says, after a moment’s heavy pause, voice high with heartbroken shock, “would you say that...!?”

“I–” Akira starts, clearly panicked. “I didn’t mean it. I’m sorry. Don’t–”

Yusuke recognizes the pattern. This time, he doesn’t take the offered, cowardly way out.

“No,” he interrupts, severely, and looks Akira in the eye. “No, explain yourself. Why would we ‘not work out’? What’s wrong with us?”

Akira swallows and looks down, silent.

“Do you still doubt my feelings for you? Have I not proven, yet, that I love you the same as ever?”

“...I’m not asking you to prove it,” Akira says, very quiet. “I just– don’t see why you would. Anymore.”

That – that doesn’t make any sense.

“How could I not love you, after everything we have grown around together?”

There it is again – a bitter, melancholy downturn of Akira’s mouth. Subtle, like many things about him.

“You don’t like when I bring that up,” Yusuke observes. “The history that we share. Why?”

“...I know it was important,” Akira says, giving in under Yusuke’s demanding gaze. “To you, to me, to a lot of people, everything we did that year. I know I was, kind of, your fairytale savior, and you my princess-knight.” Despite the tension of the moment, Yusuke smiles at the imagery.

“I just wonder,” Akira continues. “I just– I just wonder how far a single year, a single event can carry us. We’re not seventeen anymore. I’m… I’m not Joker.”

Akira’s hand scratches at the picnic blanket, restlessly. Yusuke covers it with his.

“Akira,” he says gently. “You always will be. Joker of the Phantom Thieves, the man who shot god in the face. My fairytale prince. But– you’re a lot more than that, too.”

Akira’s eyes flick to him, then back down.

“When I speak of all that we share together, do you think I only mean that single moment, you pulling me up from the darkness after my false guiding light gave out? Akira, I mean every moment.”

He leans his body forward, enough that he can peer into Akira’s lowered face. “I mean you at seventeen, and I mean you at twenty one, too. I mean last summer, when you took me to the countryside and showed me the stars, the real ones. I mean after your final year of high school, when you lifted me off the ground at the train station and twirled me around, and I knew you were as happy for the reunion as I was. I mean this morning, when I was washing my face and thought, ah, the colors of our toothbrushes go together.”

There’s a wobbly smile ghosting Akira’s face, despite what seems like his best efforts.

“Do you not still love me the same, on your side?” Yusuke asks, half genuine self-consciousness and half challenge.

“Of course I do,” Akira replies immediately, heated, and even looks at him – directly, properly – for just this one phrase. Looks down again after that. “But that’s because– you’re you.”

“I could say the same back,” Yusuke points out. Akira shrugs uncomfortably.

“...I’m not much right now,” he confesses in a raspy whisper.

“Akira,” Yusuke says, bewildered, “you’re everything. Your– your life is so full, isn’t it? You’re important to a great many people, and you excel at a frankly mind-boggling number of things–”

“And I’m not,” Akira interrupts him, “not committed to any of them, not the way that you are to art. I… I don’t know what I’m doing, Yusuke. What I want to do. I’m studying something generic, I flip-flop between jobs every other month… At this rate, I’m only dragging you down. It’s no wonder–” he pauses.

“...No,” he says slowly. “No, that’s not really relevant, is it?”

Yusuke makes a questioning noise.

“I’m just realizing,” Akira explains haltingly. “I’ve been getting upset with you about the wrong thing, I think. It’s not about– other people in your life, I’m just– I’m only–” his voice breaks a little, grinding unpleasantly against too much raw honesty at once–

“I’m so afraid to lose you.”

“You won’t,” Yusuke says with conviction and squeezes Akira’s hand harder. Finds his other hand and holds it too, for good measure. “There is nothing I want less than to part from you, Akira, nothing. You are very many things, but ‘the man that I love’ will always be one of them, the most important one for me. I promise.” He hooks his pinkie finger around Akira’s, where their hands are overlapping.

The corner of Akira’s mouth twitches at the childish gesture. “If I lie, may I get punched ten thousand times,” he says solemnly.

“May I swallow a thousand needles,” Yusuke agrees, vague memories of the rhyme surfacing in his mind. He lifts their pinkie-joined hands up to examine them more, grasping within his memory for something else he heard, or read, or something, at some point.

“...This was, originally, a gesture of devotion,” he recalls. “The story goes– a woman in Yoshiwara cut off her own finger and sent it to her beloved, as a show of absolute, flesh-rending commitment. Their relationship was that of a client and prostitute, and yet with that gesture she was implying she had come to love him, and would give her life for his.”

Yusuke touches his lips to their hooked pinkies. “Were I in her place, I would do the same for you,” he says without a hint of irony. Akira’s breath stutters.

There is a hesitation before his response, but, Yusuke can tell, watching the ebb and sway of emotion in Akira’s eyes, not a hesitation of uncertainty. This is Akira sifting through everything that he is, turning the kaleidoscope around until the light hits it just right – just right for him to fully understand what Yusuke is saying, to fully mean it when he answers in kind.

After a moment, he hooks their pinkies together tighter.

“I’d send mine back,” he says, just as serious.

The kiss they seal the promise with is deep and thorough; and afterwards, there is a light in Akira’s eyes, steady now after months of uncertain flickering. Yusuke breathes out in grateful relief.

One of their hands is still stuck in the pinkies-hooked hold, but Akira extracts the other one, lifts it to Yusuke’s face. And– flicks something off of it, and pops the finger in his mouth.

“...Did I have cream on my face,” Yusuke asks, disbelievingly flat. “Akira. Did I have cream on my face this entire time.”

Akira doesn’t answer except for a lopsided grin, but their next kiss tastes of strawberries.

The gesture becomes a sort of shorthand, a wordless code for ‘I promise, I love you’. They find themselves doing it instinctively, reaching to touch pinkie fingers whenever the moment calls for reassurance, or comfort, or an extra dose of affection.

When Yusuke comes to Akira’s apartment just to crash facedown on his bed, after a particularly brutal crit session.

When Akira is sulking about getting bankrupted in four Tycoon games in a row.

The entire time on the way to a prison visit.

When Yusuke tries to construct an art installation out of warning tape and gets so tangled up he has to call Akira to come and help him.

After an internship turns Akira away with a vague reference to a background check.

For no reason, while Akira is trying to solve a crossword, chewing on his pen with an especially endearing pout.

And – after Yusuke snaps out of looking a bit too enchanted with a story Goro’s telling. And when they end up on the same team in Pictionary and blow everyone out of the water, in a display of disturbingly compatible teamwork. And when Yusuke forgets himself and practically climbs into Goro’s lap, trying to get a closer look at the pattern of his freckles.

Every time, there is a stomach-dropping moment of guilty realization when he notices Akira’s attention on them. And every time, instead of the expected hurt or disapproval, Akira reaches out, or else accepts when Yusuke reaches out first.

I promise, I love you. I promise, I love you. I promise–

Chapter Text

“...In that case, is the employee eligible for compensation?”

Goro taps his pencil on the desk.

Obvious trick question. Easy to get right, unless you’re dumb enough to get tripped up by the mismatch between the letter of the law and unsubstantiated moral intuition.

He begins to write the first stroke of his answer.

There is a flash of rage in his heart. Goro has long papered that particular anger over with layers upon layers of cynicism and self-interest, and still it persists. A deep-dwelling creature, evolved into something monstrously enduring.

He swats it away, as always. He really can’t get caught up in concerns like that, not if he wants to make it anywhere in the legal profession.

‘...Do you?’ asks an echo of a voice from somewhere deep in his soul.

Goro’s pencil stops in its tracks.

…Does he?

He’s still not used to the idea of career prospects. That’s not a real topic, that’s just something to bullshit about in interviews, answer questions about plans for the future as if he has one.

Still, law is what he always named in those, and law is what he picked when forced to choose a direction for the suddenly looming rest of his life. Of course he wants to succeed at it. He’s well poised to, as well, has the grades for it and the experience, the understanding of the field.

The understanding that, naturally, comes with an overpowering dose of contempt. And… exhaustion. He has Sae to look up to, of course, but– she has a kind of drive for the job that keeps her insulated against the filth she has to wade through for it. Goro… doesn’t.

But that’s– fine. He doesn’t have to love his job, he just… he just needs to be good for something. Not everyone can be as passionate about their field as Yusuke–

Oh.

That was a mistake, thinking about Yusuke.

The thing with Yusuke is– somehow, his discerning eye for the truth of things very quickly became one of the highest arbiters Goro could look to, even if he’d never admit that out loud. And the other thing with Yusuke is that by now Goro knows him well enough that even private, unvoiced thoughts aren’t safe from the judgment. Not when he can so easily imagine what Yusuke would say to them.

He would… look down on him with a cool frown, and say, ‘How disappointing, to see you settle for contempt and exhaustion rather than fighting to unveil the true potential of your heart. And for what? Numbing familiarity and empty success? Like this, it won’t be long before I lose interest in you as a subject–’

Goro stands up from his desk.

“Done already, Akechi-kun?” his professor says, impressed. “This is a new record, even for you–”

Goro crumples the half-finished exam sheet in one hand.

“Excuse me,” he says. “I have to go to the academic affairs office.”

Yusuke is, putting it plainly, swamped. Rushing the creative process with strict deadlines is an abhorrent practice, counter to the very idea of art – he knows he’s put off finishing his assignments for too long, but inspiration does not bend to the corral of university schedule, and he was, as ever, at the whims of its flow…

Grating as it is, he has to make some compromises in the end. With his scholarship at stake, working at his own pace has to be… accelerated. Intensified, a bit. Surprisingly, he finds that the urgency gives the process a unique tint of excitement, a kind of freedom in valuing speed over quality, that is interesting, maybe he should experiment with self-imposed time restrictions, apply them to different stages of a project in turns, would be best to start an entirely new series for that–

No, not right now. Yusuke returns his focus to the five paintings he’s putting finishing touches on at once, last minute before the end-of-semester presentation tomorrow. He’s almost done, actually – only a couple more brushstrokes here, to enhance the luminosity, and now a hint of the same color highlight in another one, to suggest cohesion between the pieces, and… there. Yusuke takes a step back, looking over the lineup assessingly. Yes, this should be enough. Any further adjustments are more likely to muddy the vision than add anything worthwhile. And besides, he should pay attention to his guest–

Right, his guest! Yusuke whirls around to find Goro sitting quietly in the corner of his dorm room, abandoned there for what must have been hours. Yusuke was assuming he’d find some way to entertain himself in the meantime, but is surprised to see he isn’t doing anything of the sort – no book or his own exam prep materials in his hands, not even his phone.

“I’m sorry, I’m a poor host today. Were you bored? You should have asked me to provide you something to read while you wait, at least.”

“It’s fine,” Goro says, agreeably subdued. “I was just watching.”

Yusuke can understand that, has also spent hours watching other artists work, at times. He didn’t realize that such fascination extends even to those not involved in creative work themselves.

“Alright. Well, what did you need to talk about, then?” Yusuke asks, his attention now free to be given fully to Goro. He feels a little bad about ignoring him for so long, after he came here in person for what seems to be an urgent conversation, but the deep focus state could not have been interrupted any earlier.

Goro straightens up.

“I’m going through… something of a personal breakthrough,” he says. “I have come to an unpleasant realization about the way I’ve been living my life. After all the effort I– all of us put into resisting Maruki’s sanding down of our futures, I… went and did it to myself.”

Yusuke leans against a wall and hums encouragingly. This is unexpected, but clearly important – there is a taut emotional tension to Goro’s words, something on the tail end of epiphanous. Yusuke gives him space to voice out his revelations.

“After… high school,” Goro says euphemistically, “I spent some time– in a kind of stasis. And after that, it seemed like the only way to stave off a return to that state was to keep moving, to do something, to get my life on at least a semblance of track.

“The problem is… in my rush to figure it out, I set out on the path of least resistance.” His lip curls disparagingly. “And then never stepped off it, for years, because the road was just so smooth.”

He takes a moment. Yusuke waits the lull in the conversation out, and when Goro doesn’t seem ready to continue, gently offers his own perspective.

“I never realized... But I understand the sentiment, at least – the temptation is always present with art. Few things are as seductive as the numbing familiarity, the empty success of never venturing beyond whatever limited mastery comes easy to you.”

Goro almost giggles at this, for some reason. Turns serious again after that.

“Right. All of that is to say, I’m dropping out of law school.”

Oh. Yusuke thought that was where this was going, but it’s still a bit of a surprise. He nods slowly – after Goro’s previous words, it sounds like that is a good decision.

“And– the reason I’m here is that–” Goro trails off into silence again, as if needing more time to gather his resolve.

“If I’m finally committing to, to living with intention–” he starts again. “Well. That extends to the… to the relationship I have with you.”

Yusuke blinks at him in confusion. Where he fits into the topic is harder to trace.

“The truth is–” Goro says. “I’m… I have…”

He stands up from Yusuke’s artist’s stool and clenches his fists. And then, crisp and resonant–

“I have been in love with you for a long time.”

He takes a big, very audible breath. Looks down. Then back at Yusuke, seems to force himself to look directly at him.

“Back in December– I said I kissed you on a whim. That was… spineless of me, to hide the real reason. It was spineless of me to insult you as a distraction, too. That kiss, and whatever other oddities in my behavior you might have noticed – now you have the explanation.

“I don’t expect this confession to change anything, but I’m through feigning indifference. It’s… disingenuous. And unfair to both of us.”

Yusuke’s mouth has been slightly open for a while now, and that seems to be the extent of the response he’s immediately capable of.

“That’s all I wanted to say.”

Goro takes a decisive step towards the door. He hesitates with his hand on the handle, though; looks at Yusuke over his shoulder.

“I never planned to feel like this,” he says softly. “Never expected to.

“...Thank you.”

And with that, he steps out.

Yusuke takes a small step forward, after Goro. Stops, when he realizes he doesn’t know what he’d say, or do, if he did catch up to him. Stands in place for a moment.

Takes another small step forward, following a different, integral impulse – the one that is always his first thought whenever life gets too complicated, the pull towards his safest harbor.

Stops again. He doesn’t know what he’d say to Akira about this, either.

Stands in place some moments longer.

He has other people to talk to, of course – he has a suspicion Ann, in particular, would kill to be involved right now. And yet… he feels too uncertain, too live-wire vulnerable to allow the touch of any outside opinions or advice. Not yet.

He hasn’t been examining the pulsating, viscerally red vein of something that, he knows and doesn’t acknowledge, has been winding around him and Goro, squeezing them continuously closer. It seemed almost a shameful thing, with the way it upset Akira, and too unpredictable compared to the soft, bright and easy kind of romance he’s used to. And so– he hasn’t been looking at it, no matter how pleadingly his heart insisted on its importance.

Living with intention, was it?

Goro is showing him up.

Yusuke isn’t as prone to reactive competitiveness as Akira and Goro both are, but– this, this he refuses to fall behind in.

He stays home. Hauls all his schoolwork paintings aside to dry and puts up a fresh blank canvas. Holds onto his brush and breathes out, letting his feelings guide his hand.

This, after all, would be the quickest pathway to clarity.

Yusuke is distracted when Akira comes pick him up after his presentation, bearing a celebratory thermos of chilled cold brew. He sips on it gratefully, and kisses Akira as sweetly as always, and smiles when he shares the good news about his grades – but Akira is not surprised when there is a heavy pause after that.

“...Akira,” Yusuke says, “I believe I owe you a conversation.”

Akira aligns his body language towards him, ready to listen. Despite that, Yusuke stays silent, only staring at him with a strained expression, as if the wheels of his mind are spinning idly, unable to find purchase.

Maybe it’s a location problem. The buzz of students rushing out of the building is not a good backdrop for a feelings talk.

“Inokashira?” Akira suggests, and Yusuke lights up, bolstered.

The entire way there, Yusuke stews quietly in whatever it is he has to say, and Akira lets him. It’s still a companionable, comfortable silence, not a tense one, so he’s at ease. In the park, they find their way to the boats on autopilot, both drawn to the nostalgic destination.

Once on the water, Akira makes sure to roll his arms as he rows, just to watch Yusuke’s eyes track the motion with the expected hint of hunger. Akira stifles a smug smile.

Yusuke shakes his head, bringing himself back to his thoughts. He seems ready to voice them now, after the change of scenery.

“There is a topic we’ve been avoiding,” he says, plainly.

Ah. The Goro question.

Akira stretches his hand out, and Yusuke latches their pinkies together immediately.

“You were right,” Yusuke continues, more confident than Akira would expect for this can of worms, “about my feelings for Goro, even though I couldn’t see it with my own eyes at first. Once again, my love, you know me better than I know myself.”

He falls quiet for a moment.

“We haven’t talked about it since then,” Akira says cautiously. “Why now? What– what is it you want, from this conversation?”

“Nothing concrete,” Yusuke muses. “But I was inspired, recently, to shine a merciless light on every corner of my heart, and I believe you should be included in that excision of shadows. I don’t want to hurt you, I would never want to hurt you, but– I’d like to be forthright. I don’t want uncertainty between us, even if the truth is unpleasant to face.”

Akira strokes Yusuke’s hand with the tips of his fingers.

“...Alright,” he says. “I’m ready to face it.”

Yusuke takes a steadying breath.

“I am… quite in love with Goro. Have been, I think, for a while, without noticing. It’s a feeling very similar to what I feel for you, which is how I can be sure. I crave his company at all times, and for every single thing I look at I find myself wondering, with insatiable curiosity, what he would think about it. And that is besides the more physical attraction, the images that come unbidden to my mind when his voice drops lower, or when I stare at his hands too long and my imagination supplies the idea of them on my wrists, or trailing over– well, that is beside the point.”

Akira is taking this really much better than he would have in the past, even only a couple months ago. But he’s still glad Yusuke took mercy on him and stopped the list when he did.

“What is the point?” Akira asks. There is an apprehension to his tone, but it’s tempered by the security of Yusuke’s hand in his.

“Just that… that those are the facts. I love you with all my heart, and yet I love him as well.”

“...Do you want to act on it?” Akira asks the obvious question.

Yusuke shakes his head immediately. “No. I understand that even harboring these feelings is– may be taken as a betrayal of our partnership. But if you ask me to try and eradicate them… I don’t know if I could comply, Akira, I’m sorry. If this infatuation dissipates, eventually, by itself – so be it, but I will not treat it as an enemy while it lives in my heart.

“With that said… I suppose– an amount of distance is negotiable, if, if you need that to feel more certain of my devotion to you–”

“I don’t,” Akira says quickly. “I told you, I wouldn’t ask that of you.”

“...I mean no offense, love,” Yusuke says, “but you’ve told me a lot of things you didn’t mean, about this. Regarding being alright with it, most notably.”

Akira winces. “I mean it now. Even… regarding being alright, too.”

Yusuke gasps, eyes flashing with a sparkle. “Truly?”

“...Yeah,” Akira says. “Come here.”

They share a kiss, slow and grounding.

“I know you love me,” Akira whispers. “I do,” Yusuke agrees in a whisper as well, still a fraction of an inch away from Akira’s face.

After another shared breath, he leans back, satisfied relief smoothing the lines of his shoulders. He seems to decide the conversation is concluded, with that.

Akira doesn’t.

“You didn’t answer my question.”

Yusuke startles. “Which one?”

“Do you want to act on it? For your sake, not mine? Pretend– pretend it wouldn’t affect our relationship in any way, at all.”

Yusuke looks like a rabbit in headlights.

“Does it– does it matter? …But, no. You’re right– this is part of facing the truth, too.”

He takes a moment to stare at the water, watch the play of light on the waves.

“If I could reciprocate his feelings without endangering what we share… yes. Yes, I would. If I could have anything I want– I want that. I want– everything.”

Akira, internally, stumbles over ‘reciprocate’ – so, that’s what this is about. Good job managing to say it, Goro, he thinks, and means it genuinely.

Yusuke is looking down now, at the bottom of the boat.

“...But I know romance does not work like that. I’m already… already breaking some rules of it, I’m sure. I won’t break more, if I can help it.”

Akira watches his unhappily determined expression, and his heart hurts. Yusuke deserves everything. Anything he could ever want, he deserves it.

Akira thinks about it. And then– he takes the risk.

“About that,” he says conspiratorially, leaning closer again. When Yusuke lifts his eyes, he sends him a rakish smile, like an invitation to an adventure.

“So, you know that shirt Ryuji always wears?”

Goro figures the invitation to third-wheel Akira and Yusuke’s beach date is their way of reaffirming the baseline of normalcy, signaling that the friendships are intact. Embarrassing as it is to be coddled, Goro is grateful for the reassurance.

The day goes well. There is a distinct patina of awkwardness to the dynamic, but it scrapes off quickly, so easily Goro barely notices it was there. And the sand is pleasantly hot beneath his feet, and the blazing sun rays feel like an embrace, made even more comforting by the salty breeze from the ocean. Watching Akira and Yusuke’s inescapable, casual affinity for each other still stings, but the relief from the bitter secrecy around his own feelings is a powerful soothing balm. It’s the same kind of freedom as tipping his face towards the sun, not caring if it will freckle too visibly. As putting his hair up to cool his neck, even though it looks messy, and hair ties cause snags and breakage.

Goro leans back, and relaxes more than he has been able to in months.

He doesn’t see Akira and Yusuke exchange a silent conversation, held entirely in facial expressions. Questioning to worried to encouraging to, finally, determined.

“...Akira,” Yusuke says with a slight strain of performance, “would you get us something to drink?”

There’s a rustle as Akira gets to his feet. Goro mumbles something about ginger ale, from his spot on the beach blanket.

In another couple of moments, he feels a shadow fall over him. Goro cracks an eye open to the sight of Yusuke leaning, as usual, too close, staring into his face with intensity Goro will never acclimate to. He feels his cheeks heat up.

“What?” he says, sitting up to a safer distance.

Yusuke folds his hands in his lap, as if to gather focus. Odd.

“I never did give an answer to your confession,” he says.

Oh. Oh no.

“You don’t need to,” Goro replies in a rush. Please don’t, actually. “I already know what it is – you’re thoroughly,” obnoxiously, “in love with Akira, and can’t return my feelings. I know.” He doesn’t really want to hear it said out loud.

Yusuke gives a solemn nod. “You’re half right,” he says.

Goro frowns. “Don’t tell me there’s trouble in paradise.” If there is, surely Yusuke understands he is the last person to come to about it.

“Oh, not at all,” Yusuke says brightly. “Akira is the light of my heart, as always. It’s the other point where you are mistaken.

“I can, and do, return the love you have offered me.”

Goro feels the world sway, a little bit. Maybe he’s getting heatstroke.

Yusuke shifts closer; then seems to think better of it, for the time being.

“What I mean is– I am intensely, achingly drawn to you. I never had the courage to confront it, not until you showed me how.”

This does not feel like a real conversation. Yusuke would never pull a cruel prank like this, so that leaves being asleep. He’s asleep and this is a dream.

“...Does that mean I have, what, a chance?” Goro asks, for the sake of it. Might as well ask.

“In a fashion,” Yusuke says. “Before anything else, you have the truth. Even if nothing comes of it, this is me laying everything bare in return for your honesty.”

Right. Goro’s head is still spinning, but things are starting to make a bit more sense.

“So… you feel the same, but it could never be,” he summarizes doubtfully.

“...That, actually, depends on you,” Yusuke says. The confusion comes back with a vengeance, just as it was starting to let up.

“Akira and I have had… a discussion. About the rules of romance, and whether we have any need of them between us. In the end, it all comes down to the importance of carving one’s own path, once again.

“And so we are… extending an invitation. To you, if you would take it.”

Yusuke looks at him with a horribly earnest, horribly hopeful expression.

“Alongside my relationship with Akira, I want one with you.

“I want to take your hand and dance at the masquerade of romance, with all its dates and anniversaries, and good morning texts, and matching accessories. I want to learn what makes your heart sing, and to share mine with you freely.

“I want to see how our feelings for each other would flourish, if we allowed them to.”

Yusuke finishes his speech and lets the silence hang in the air. Stunned. Expectant.

Goro scrambles to find words. To force them out past his throat, which has gone dry as a desert.

“You… want that,” is all he manages.

A nod, almost shy despite the boldness of Yusuke’s words.

“With me.”

Another nod.

“And I could just… have you,” Goro croaks out, tremulously faint.

“You could have me,” Yusuke agrees in half-whisper. He kept his voice steady throughout the entire conversation before, while he was laying out the facts for Goro to respond to, but this sentence shines through with a desperate desire. Goro hangs onto it, astonished.

“...But,” Yusuke finishes his thought, “not all to yourself.”

And there’s the catch.

Goro wants to laugh. He can have everything he could ever wish for, but there’s a catch.

He doesn’t know if he can bear sharing. With Akira, of all people. Doesn’t know how he’s supposed to take a step back and let Yusuke go to him time after time after time, not after getting a taste of holding him in his arms, of knowing what that’s like.

But the alternative is never getting a taste at all. The alternative is never waking up next to Yusuke, never hearing this desire in his voice again – not directed at him, at least. The alternative is hearing Yusuke Kitagawa say ‘I want to share my heart with you’ and telling him no.

What kind of fool. What kind of absolute brainless idiot would he be to not take this offer?

“I–” he starts–

Akira comes back with the drinks.

The scene freezes.

“Oops,” Akira says sheepishly. “Too early?

He sounds so casual about it. There is no way, Goro thinks, there is no way you know what you’re offering.

He should show him, then.

See if he won’t take it back, afterwards.

Goro lunges forward, locking lips with Akira’s boyfriend with all the heat of years of repressed desire. He expects a repeat of their last kiss, if it could be called a kiss – a sad and rotten experience, making the loneliness only sharper than before–

But this time, Yusuke kisses back.

Yusuke kisses back with his entire being, arching his body closer and licking into Goro’s mouth with overwhelming enthusiasm, gasping needily at the hint of teeth on his lower lip. Goro loses track of what he was trying to do, whatever point he was trying to make and drowns in it.

He leans closer, more forcefully, and Yusuke gets tipped down onto the beach blanket – his arm comes up to hang onto Goro’s back for balance, and then his fingers sink into his hair, find the ponytail and undo it. Goro grabs his other hand and pins it down, acting on some irrational fear that this moment could disappear like fog if he doesn’t hold it tight enough, and Yusuke makes a noise into the kiss. Goro forgets anything else exists or has existed, ever.

They run out of breath, eventually. When they finally break apart, Goro struggles to come back to himself.

“...So, was that a yes?” Akira asks from somewhere above them. Sounding startled but also kind of like he’s trying not to laugh, a little bit. He leans down and pokes Goro’s shoulder with the ice-cold soda can. “Hey. Goro Akechi.”

When Goro turns to him to meet his eyes, they are deadly serious.

“Are you taking the invitation?”

Not taking it back, then. But not backing down an inch, either.

Not that Goro would expect him to, of course.

He nods, rising to the gravity in Akira’s expression. Looks back to Yusuke, who still seems a bit too dazed to process anything. “I– I want a relationship with you as well,” he says, the words coming straight from his heart. And then, for clarity’s sake, even if he has to force it through his teeth, “Alongside yours and Akira’s.”

Yusuke beams at him. Then rises gracefully to a sitting position, shakes sand out of his hair, and beams at Akira, too.

“Good,” Akira smiles. “I’m– I’m glad.”

He drops their sodas on the blanket and reaches his hand to grab onto Yusuke’s for a moment, with some kind of gesture Goro doesn’t catch.

“...And– you should talk some more, yeah? Figure things out. Just don’t, you know,” he visibly holds back a snicker, “get arrested for public indecency.”

Goro flushes. Their spot is conveniently out of the way, out of sight of other beach-goers, but it’s not like he was thinking about that when he was snogging Yusuke like he wants to eat him.

“So, I’m gonna go home first,” Akira concludes. “Mona must be bored over there, anyway.” And he leans down for a quick kiss goodbye, offhand and undemanding, and then picks up his tote and jogs away, his gait wobbling slightly on the sand.

And Goro… Goro feels a cold tingle at the back of his neck.

Even after the earth-shattering, heady closeness he shared with Yusuke a moment ago–

This simple expression of affection feels like an ultimately higher claim.

Chapter Text

[So, um…]

[Good morning text, as requested]

He doesn’t really know what he’s supposed to say in those. Maybe just–

[<3]

[Yusuke: Good morning to you as well!]

[Yusuke: I had a dream about you]

[Yusuke: Nothing exciting, a mundane scene of no consequence – my subconscious mind simply added you to a dream I keep having, the one where I’m lost in a supermarket, but every single aisle has the most mouthwatering range of free samples]

[Yusuke: But I was very happy you were there]

[Yusuke: As if I get to have a secret, additional moment with you, retrieved from behind the veil between dreams and the waking world]

[Yusuke: What a bargain!]

[Yusuke: That’s thematically appropriate, for the setting]

[Yusuke: Does that make you another free sample?]

[Yusuke: I should hope not. That comparison is too transient for my liking]

Goro blinks at his phone. His cheeks almost hurt, with the helpless way he’s smiling.

[You know, Yusuke]

[I’ve had a number of dreams about you as well]

[I kept those to myself, but…]

[I suppose there’s no harm in describing them now, if you’d be interested]

[Yusuke: Oh!]

[Yusuke: Yes, please do!]

Goro rolls over in his bed, winding the blanket around himself like a cocoon. He has to resist a ridiculous urge to kick his legs.

[Well, in the most recent one–]

“Do you get a feeling,” Yusuke says, contemplatively, “that this scenery is missing something?”

Goro squints at the painting. It seems like a generic cityscape, but… yes, on a closer look there is an inviting kind of emptiness to it.

“I think it’s waiting for someone,” he agrees. “As if– you could step in and become a part of the scene, seamlessly.”

Yusuke hums in confirmation.

“...I should bring Akira here, show him this one,” he says. “I imagine this is how he sees the world.”

How very fitting.

Akira isn’t in the painting, and isn’t on the gallery date with them, and still his presence is inescapable. Of course it is– he’s such an inalienable part of Yusuke’s life, it would never be possible to pretend anything, a single moment could ever be about the two of them, Goro and Yusuke, only.

Maybe this was a mistake. Maybe Goro should have never agreed to this.

“Yusuke.”

“M-m?”

Yusuke smiles at him, lit up gently by the pinkish setting sun. Goro reaches out and combs his hair out of his face, carefully, deliberately. Tries to record the feeling of the brush of his fingertips over Yusuke’s temple with the greatest detail possible, like he knows this sense memory will become a centerpiece in his heart for years to come. Like he doesn’t trust the moment to stay for longer. Like he’s still stealing something he’s not allowed, despite their new relationship status.

‘Aren’t you too good to be true?’ Goro thinks, and doesn’t voice. And, ‘Does this really make any sense?’ And, ‘Are you sure I can have this?’ And, also, ‘I love y–’

“You had a leaf in your hair,” he says instead.

“Oh, what kind?” Yusuke looks around for the non-existent leaf. “Not ginkgo, was it? It’s much too early for them to fall, but the twin-lobed shape would make for a perfect memento from a romantic outing– We should go ginkgo watching when it’s time, actually, I rather want to see you framed by the golden canopy– Ah, that phrasing makes me wonder, could real leaves, or at least their outlines, be used as a decorative frame for a composition? What if–”

By the time Akira and Goro are finished arguing about the movie’s plot twist – or, Goro is finished arguing against Akira’s occasional shrugs and eyebrow raises – it’s well into the night.

“Ah, damn,” Akira says in realization. “The trains…”

He reaches for his phone to look up taxi rates, wincing apprehensively. “How come none of us own a car,” he whines, just for the sake of it.

Goro lifts an empty beer can up at him. “Wouldn’t be able to drive, anyway.”

He thinks about it for a moment.

“You can just stay. We’ll find space for three.”

There is a startled clang from the kitchen, where Yusuke has been conscientiously putting their dishes away.

“...Honey?” Akira calls out. “Everything alright?”

“...Fine,” Yusuke peeks back into the room, looking weirdly flushed. “Did I hear– are we staying the night? All, all three of us?”

His voice frays at the edges with a pleasant kind of fretful anticipation. Akira and Goro exchange a glance.

“Oh, Yusuke,” Akira purrs – dangerously, gleefully low. “Have you been waiting for this?”

He walks up to him, moving with predatory grace, and reaches to caress his face with the back of his hand. Yusuke lets out a half-choked yelp and takes an involuntary step back – right into Goro’s waiting arms.

“I wasn’t– wasn’t certain either of you would, would be amenable,” he stammers out, “but of course I’ve been– ah!”

Goro nibbles at the column of his throat, making Yusuke lean into Akira’s now-turned palm on his cheek, close his eyes against the sensation. Akira parts his lips with two of his fingers and shivers when Yusuke immediately kisses them with keen eagerness, unraveling readily into the touch.

“Shouldn’t make you wait any longer, then,” Goro whispers, pressing even closer.

‘I’m sorry I stormed off,’ Goro types out, and throws his phone on the bed with restless force. He gnaws on the back of his hand as he paces around the room, his mind bouncing between who he’s angry at.

Himself, for losing his temper. Yusuke, for not bothering to warn him he already has someone over. Himself, for not guessing that. Akira, for being good at fucking cooking and therefore getting to be all domestic with his stupid soup and rice porridge. Himself, for blowing up at Yusuke instead of taking care of him, like he was planning to.

Himself, mostly.

Yusuke hasn’t replied. Is he mad, still? Is he too busy letting Akira fuss over him to even remember Goro exists?

He probably just fell asleep, Goro hisses at himself inside his brain.

His fingers hover over the phone keyboard. What else does he say, even? ‘Sorry for being a shit boyfriend’? ‘At least you have a spare one’?

In the end, all he types is, ‘I hope you feel better soon.’

The next day, it’s Akira’s turn to skip classes and send pathetic puffy selfies to the group chat. Goro didn’t know he could be so jealous of a fever and clogged sinuses.

“...It’s a difficult endeavor, reinventing yourself,” Yusuke concludes quietly. “Every time I think I have put the past behind me, I find another insidious trace of it in my beliefs, habits, knee-jerk reactions. It’s… frustrating.”

Goro squeezes his hand. “...I know,” he agrees quietly. “But– you’re doing great, Yusuke. It’s… it’s aspirational, honestly. You’ve helped me with the same task so much, over the years.”

Yusuke looks at him seriously, searchingly. And then extracts his hand from Goro’s only to return it immediately, to a slightly different position – holding onto Goro’s pinkie finger like making a promise, now.

“This again. What is that?” Goro asks. He’s been curious for a while.

“Gesture of devotion,” Yusuke explains. There’s a faint dusting of pink over his cheeks.

“Yours and Akira’s?”

Yusuke’s smile fades, and he falls silent for a moment. When he speaks, it’s halting. Cautious. “It could be ours as well.”

Goro has to admit to himself Yusuke’s anxiety is not misplaced. He knows this is something very likely to set him off, in theory – the choice between accepting Akira’s hand-me-downs and missing out on something they get to have.

The mood is too soft, too earnest for that right now, though.

“...You two can keep it,” Goro decides after a moment’s consideration. And then, with a hint of mischief in his voice– “I can have–”

He untangles their hands to instead lean closer and sneak the tips of his fingers just under the hem of Yusuke’s shirt, brushing against the curve of his waist. Savors the way Yusuke arches into the touch.

“–a million other gestures with you.”

[Good morning. Your definition of a portrait is inherently flawed; I will accept that photography is capable of portraiture, but the idea that /any/ photo of a human subject is a portrait in the philosophical sense is preposterous]

[♡⁠♡⁠⁠♡: Good morning, Goro]

⁠[♡⁠♡⁠⁠♡: Did you know that various cultures across the world have superstitions about having your photo taken? Supposedly it steals a part of the subject’s soul – surely there is a grain of truth behind these fears, in that any still snapshot of a person’s existence reveals something about their essence]

[You can’t actually believe that. A vapid selfie is a snapshot of personal essence?]

[♡⁠♡⁠⁠♡: A snapshot of the image the subject/photographer is trying to construct, certainly]

[Alright, then it’s about intentionality. Is a candid photo a portrait?]

⁠[♡⁠♡⁠⁠♡: one minute]

The next message Yusuke sends is a photo – of Akira, still soundly asleep despite bright morning lighting of the picture. It’s taken from an awkward angle, not enough distance between him and the camera. Goro bites his lip.

⁠[♡⁠♡⁠⁠♡: Does this count as intentional? Clearly my subject is not even aware of being portrayed, but I do believe the resulting picture still captures something genuine about him]

[Is this just now?]

⁠[♡⁠♡⁠⁠♡: Just a moment ago, yes]

[I didn’t know you were with Akira.]

⁠[♡⁠♡⁠⁠♡: ? I often am]

That makes sense. It’s not like Goro wasn’t aware Yusuke stays the night at Akira’s place half the time. (Or yours, an annoyingly reasonable part of his mind pipes up. Goro blocks it out.)

But… it’s one thing to know that in abstract. The idea that Yusuke has been reading his morning texts from Akira’s embrace…

Goro’s phone pings with more messages.

He doesn’t bother to check, or respond.

“Goro, you have to tell me what the problem is–”

“The problem is that I have to tell you,” Goro snaps. “The problem is that you don’t– you won’t ever think of me first, until I have to beg for it–”

“I think of you all the time,” Yusuke says despairingly.

“Did you think of me when you were making your weekend plans, then?” Goro asks coolly. “For your little outing yesterday?”

“I– what does that have to do with anything?”

“I haven’t seen you in a week,” Goro grinds out. “And the first day you’re free from your project work lockdown, you didn’t even bother to call me.”

“...I’m sorry,” Yusuke concedes. “I missed you too while I was busy, I did. It’s just that– we already had plans for today, it’s only a day’s difference–”

“And you went to see Akira first.”

Yusuke winces.

“But– that wasn’t even my idea. Ryuji invited us…”

“You could have invited me, then.”

“...Would you have come?”

To a monster ramen challenge? Absolutely not. Goro feels nauseous even thinking about it.

“That’s not the point,” he says, anyway.

Yusuke tugs on the edges of his sleeves, keyed up.

What are we doing? Goro thinks. Who are we trying to fool?

He’s trying, he really is. And Yusuke is also trying, he can tell. And Akira, even.

And still. And still.

“Oh!” Yusuke exclaims. “Akira, do you remember…?”

They are taking a walk around the neighborhood, after a successful round of book shopping. Goro hasn’t really been around here before, but Akira and Yusuke both seem to recognize the place – some kind of Western church they’re passing by. Incongruously, Akira bends one leg and throws his arms up into a ridiculous pose – his backpack lets out a yowl at being jostled – and Yusuke repeats the movement immediately, with joyful gusto. They bump their shoulders together afterwards in shared, affectionate nostalgia, and Goro just watches.

From the outside, looking in.

Who is he trying to fool?

The creeping resignation completes its conquest.

“...Yusuke,” he calls out quietly.

“Can we talk?”

Yusuke turns to him, still glowing with his sunny mood. Goro hates himself, a little, for what he’s about to do to it.

“Alone,” he adds, and feels his heart break at the way Yusuke’s face falls as he catches on.

Distantly, Goro’s aware of Akira making himself scarce in the background.

“No,” Yusuke says.

“Yusuke, this isn’t working.”

“No. No-no-no, Goro, it can work, I know it can–”

He reaches out. Goro takes a step back.

“Stop it. Don’t– don’t hold onto me. There isn’t a reward at the end, I– I won’t return to a true human form and be good to you. This is all there is. It will just keep hurting us both.”

“But you have been trying, we both have been trying–”

Goro closes his eyes. “I’m tired of trying,” he admits in a whisper. “I just– enough.

“Enough.”

Yusuke doesn’t try to reach for him again. Just stands there, in the middle of the street, coiled tight with heartbroken tension. Blinks several times, very fast.

“...Please stay in my life,” he says in a small voice, after a while. “At least please stay in my life. Let me keep you as a friend, if I can’t have you as a lover.”

Goro’s heart gives a violent twinge. No, he could never leave Yusuke’s life entirely. It’s unthinkable.

“...Of course,” he says, a touch raspy. “Of course.”

If Goro spends the entire Valentine’s Day holed up in his room, looping a playlist of embarrassingly dramatic break-up songs, nobody has to know about it.

If Yusuke sighs, melancholy, over the giant pink cocktail with a heart-shaped party straw, Akira doesn’t take it personally.

He had been, selfishly, for a moment, glad that they get to have the holiday all to themselves. But– this does not feel at all like a victory.

Chapter Text

Goro goes to the gallery by himself. Usually, whenever Yusuke’s work gets displayed somewhere, they try to all get together, make a day of it, but–

It’s silly, but Goro feels like being alone with Yusuke’s art would be almost like being alone with Yusuke himself. Specifically– like one of those 2 am conversations that felt like cracking each other’s shells open to see something raw and fundamental inside, to be seen that way in return. The ones that made Goro forget entirely that he’s Yusuke’s second choice.

He strides purposefully past all other displayed works, scanning the plaques for the familiar name. He finds it before he actually looks at the painting itself, so when he lifts his eyes up and to the side, it’s–

There are two silhouettes, backlit so harshly no features can be distinguished, only the overall shapes. The body language, though, manages to convey a lot – they’re half-leaning on the ground, angled towards one another with what appears to be tentative, wondrous curiosity. Not touching, yet, but the lines of their bodies mirror each other with such elegant precision there can be no doubt in a viewer’s mind that these are magnetic jigsaw pieces, ones that will perfectly fit. The background light swirls with warm pinks and yellows, full of promise.

The figures are anonymous, almost universal. Unless you know what you’re looking for.

Goro’s shaking fingers press the call button before he ever registers what he’s doing.

“Yusuke,” he says all in one breath as soon as the call is picked up, “is that us?”

“...You saw it,” Yusuke says on the other side of the line. “I–” he starts bashfully, stumbles over his words. “I painted that, the first draft of it, at least, the night after you… when you came to me with your…”

“–I love you,” Goro says.

He wasn’t going to. He’s not in control of himself, right now.

In their months together, he never managed to say it properly – the initial confession is as close as he ever got. Yusuke has said it, a couple of times, which Goro treasures carefully in his heart – offhandedly in response to a clever joke. Into the crook of his neck, late at night. In a frustrated attempt to put a stop to an argument.

But Goro hasn’t.

Yusuke sucks in a breath, crackling with static over the phone connection.

“Stay where you are,” he says hurriedly. “Don’t move a muscle.”

And then he hangs up.

Goro stays where he is. He’s not sure he could move if he wanted, anyway. The painting hypnotizes him.

The night after his confession… Then, did he serve as an inspiration, from a purely artistic position? Or was this Yusuke turning to art to untangle his own feelings, to find a pathway to clarity?

And if so, is this how he feels? How he’s felt, all this time?

Is this what Goro allowed himself to let go of?

“Goro!”

Goro snaps out of it. Yusuke rushes up to him in quick steps, slowed down only just enough that they wouldn’t get kicked out of the gallery.

He reaches out and cradles Goro’s face in his hands, and then kisses him like the first gulp of water on a swelteringly hot day.

“Can we–” he starts, still out of breath, as soon as he pulls away.

“Yes,” Goro says, before Yusuke can even finish saying ‘try again’.

This may be an unconventional, unheard of approach to a relationship, but–

“No, it’s totally a thing,” Ann interrupts confidently. “Lots of people do that. Can you not squirm?”

Goro obediently holds his hand still, despite the grating sound of the polisher on his nails.

“Do they?” he asks.

Ann rolls her eyes. “Yeah, you three didn’t invent polyamory. Be so for real.”

She moves on to cleaning his fingers with a little brush, which feels much less unpleasant.

“There’s forums and such. You should probably read up on it all, actually. You know, work on your, um… skills. Interpersonal.”

“Just me?” Goro asks testily.

Ann scrunches her face at him in a doubtful expression that seems to say, ‘Yeah, well. You know how it is.’

Goro sighs, conceding. She’s not wrong.

It still stings to admit to being the weakest link.

Goro shoots an apprehensive glance at the broccoli florets sticking out of Ryuji’s nose and says, “...Truth.”

“What’s your new program,” Futaba demands immediately.

There is a shuffle of curiosity from all around the room, everyone leaning forward.

“Don’t tell me you haven’t cyberstalked that information already,” Goro deflects.

“I,” Futaba announces sagely, “am practicing privacy.”

Goro raises an eyebrow. “Even with me?”

She rolls her eyes performatively, as if agreeing Goro’s private information should by all accounts be fair game. “Sojiro says no exceptions,” she mumbles. “So! What is it!”

Goro wishes Yusuke were here, at least. For moral support.

“...Please don’t laugh,” he says. “I’m actually begging. Please don’t.”

“We won’t laugh, Akechi-chan,” Haru says carefully. Goro wasn’t worried about her – he directs a sharp look at Futaba, who raises an arm in an oath gesture.

Fine.

“...Social welfare,” he admits, begrudgingly. “And non-profit management.

“I know it’s… uncharacteristic.”

He doesn’t look up at anyone.

“Nah,” Akira says after a beat, so warm Goro almost jolts at the unexpected affection. “I think it fits you.”

“Where are we going, then?” Yusuke asks, following after Goro. “Penguin sniper?”

“No, it’s– you’ll see. …It’s somewhere that was my private safe place, once.”

That’s exciting. Yusuke tries to imagine the kind of place Goro would find comfort at and hurries forward, eager to get to compare his ideas with reality.

Goro, meanwhile, stops at a familiar entrance. “It’s just down here–” he starts–

“Oh, but isn’t that Jazz Jin? I haven’t been here in so long! How nostalgic– I wonder if they still make that blue cocktail…? Ah, we should check if today is a singer night!”

Yusuke looks around the entrance, searching for a board with the event schedule.

“...You’ve been here before?” Goro asks.

“Yes, Akira used to take me all the time – almost every single evening, for a while. I remember the place well, the ambience here is simply unmatched–”

“Great,” Goro says, crossing his arms.

Yusuke’s enthusiasm curdles like milk. He knows that tone.

“...Shall we go in, then?” he asks in a valiant attempt at distraction.

“I’m not in the mood anymore,” Goro snaps out. “Come back with Akira, I guess.”

And he turns around and begins to stride away, back in the direction they came from.

Yusuke clenches his teeth.

“Goro,” he says, with freezing reproach.

He’s not begging him to stay, this time. He’s enforcing a reminder.

‘Try again’ means putting in effort.

Goro stops.

Yusuke can see his shoulders heave on an exhale.

“You have to tell me what the problem is,” Yusuke says, gentler now.

Goro doesn’t turn around before he speaks.

“I didn’t know Akira brought other people here. I mean, that’s– fine, I suppose. It’s not like I own the place. But…” he wraps his arms around his ribs, an unsettlingly lonely gesture. “I wanted to take you here, the whole reason I wanted to take you here was so we’d have a place that would be. Only for us.”

Yusuke didn’t even know this was Goro’s spot first. But this explains, in hindsight, why Akira’s invitations abruptly stopped including the location, at the end of that calamitous year.

He walks up to Goro and pulls on his arm to get him to release the pitiful self-hug, to let Yusuke hold his hand instead.

“Let’s go somewhere else, then,” he says softly. “I know a spot.”

They take the trains out to Shibuya, and Yusuke pulls him along to a more residential area, weaving through quiet back streets. They walk down a short flight of stairs to a tiny plaza, just a small spot of empty space around an abandoned stage platform, elevated on a kind of lattice of stilts.

And then– Yusuke walks around it and drops to the ground, lies almost flat on his back and scoots forward under the structure.

“Um,” Goro says.

Instead of explaining anything, Yusuke just hooks his fingers under a floor panel above him– and slides it open, despite the metallic groan it emits. And then pokes his head into the resulting trapdoor and climbs in.

Left with no other choices, Goro follows the same sequence.

He emerges– into what appears to be a small dressing room, or backstage area, at the side of the structure. It’s as dilapidated as the rest of it, motes of dust dancing around scattered beams of light that come in through cracks between wall panels. The spotty illumination makes Yusuke look a little otherworldly, light catching on his face in random patches.

“I understand this is hardly a romantic destination,” he says. “But– you wanted to show me your personal safe place.

“This is mine.”

He sits down on the metal floor, next to the rusted-shut door. Hugs his knees.

“I used to get… locked out, sometimes. Not often, but– enough to learn to be more ingenious in my search for shelter from the elements.

“And after I found this spot, I… kept it. It was my secret place, to hide away at. From everything and everyone.”

Yusuke smiles at his reminiscence.

“Here, look,” he says, and points at the scratched-up wall near his shoulder.

Scratched-up in, actually… rather complicated patterns, Goro realizes.

Now that he’s looking closer, he can clearly distinguish the images. The lines are gouged into the material unevenly, with varying success, but the artistry still shines through, even in this awkward medium.

Goro walks closer and touches the scratchy depiction of a flock of birds, in mid-flight. Away, to somewhere else. Anywhere.

“Yusuke,” he says. His voice comes out thick with sympathy and recognition, and gratitude at being invited here, and–

“M-m?”

“I love you.”

“–and nothing is wrong, nothing I would know to need to fix. In the past, an artist’s block was usually psychological in nature, a downstream effect of some private drama in my heart, but this time it’s… entirely self-contained. I’m not even uninspired, but every time I try to put a line to paper it’s all– ah, one moment.”

Yusuke’s phone rings in his pocket, interrupting his spiral of gloom. “Yes?” he picks up. “Yes, love, of course we can reschedule. Is everything– … Oh, I see. … No, you don’t have to– … A-ha, alright, I’ll accept that currency. But, Akira, a million? … I’ll hold you to it, then. … Goodbye– I love you too.”

He hangs up, smiling to himself about the promise of ten million kisses, upgraded from just one. His disquieted mood settles down, a little.

It comes back when he turns back to Goro and notes, with a sharp spike of irritation, that his lips are pressed into a thin, unhappy line.

“What is it now?” Yusuke huffs, perhaps uncharitably.

“...Nothing,” Goro says, looking away.

“Go ahead, out with it. How did I fail to maintain equality in my affections this time?”

“Yusuke,” Goro says, clearly taken aback at being attacked first. “It’s really nothing important.”

Don’t be so surprised when two can play this game, Yusuke thinks, vindictive. He wouldn’t react like this, normally, but–

He was trying to confide in his partner, someone who holds one of the sets of keys to his heart. And all Goro cares about, once again, is if he gets more points than Akira does.

“This entire conversation is nothing important, clearly,” he says acridly, and gets up from their table. “I’d better get back to the studio.”

Goro frowns like he’s in pain, but lets Yusuke leave without complaint. Yusuke wishes that he’d bother to stop him with a kind of bruised anger, one that haunts him for the rest of the day.

The argument is about something so small it should never have mattered. They are watching a documentary, and Yusuke checks his phone, just once, and Goro mutters something sulky, along the lines of ‘Could you try to be present with me?’

And then it gets out of hand.

Accusations get slung, and Goro takes the defensive stance of not being well-suited for the kind of relationship they have, not naturally, and then Yusuke says, in the heat of the moment, “Maybe you simply don’t want to be with me enough to learn!” and–

And Goro says, “Maybe I don’t.”

The phrase rings out in the sudden apprehensive silence.

“...You don’t mean that,” Yusuke says, all his anger abruptly extinguished into coals of fear.

Goro… smiles at him, too brightly. “You know what– I think I do,” he says. “Right this moment, I don’t want to be with you at all. Not even in the same room.”

Is that how it is.

“Fine, then,” Yusuke bites out. “I’ll leave, if I’m that unwanted.”

“Fine!” Goro mirrors, and doesn’t go after Yusuke into the hallway.

“Fine!” Yusuke full-on shouts, and slams the door on his way out.

There is a feeling, after that fight, of a bridge cracked but intact, just waiting for someone to come and mend it.

Neither of them do.

The friendship, at least, survives. Enough that they still talk, even if it’s stilted. Enough that Yusuke doesn’t avoid at least group hangouts that include Goro, even if they both stick to spending time with other people.

That last point is, maybe, sometimes a silver lining. Some of the other people Akira invites to gatherings are pretty interesting, apparently.

“In the choice between self-preservation and the demands of battle advancement, what road shall the warrior-cleric take…?” Goro’s opponent considers, dramatically.

Goro didn’t realize Akira knew Hifumi Togo. Through Yusuke, maybe? Didn’t they go to the same school? Goro’s memory is hazy on that point, but he remembers Hifumi herself – their short-lived moments in the spotlight coincided in time, and he had to be aware of her, in case she’d end up someone he’d need to charm.

He never knew her personally, though. She’s… easy to be around, turns out. Kind of familiar, in a faintly aching way. And it’s a pleasant surprise that she plays a riveting game of chess, even though it’s not her specialty.

Hifumi sacrifices her bishop. Goro takes it, on his next move.

“I can’t help but notice,” Hifumi says in her soft-spoken voice, “that you have a rather peculiar style of play.”

Goro leans forward a little. “Oh?”

He’s satisfied with his skills, but holds no illusions – they are far from professional-level. The opinion of an actual prodigy should serve as either helpful feedback or– well, preferably, something to preen about.

Hifumi frowns. “It’s off-putting,” she says definitively.

Oh. “Why?”

“You are not treating the game with the care it deserves.”

“What does that mean?” Goro asks, genuinely curious.

“Any strategy game is a journey. Every move you make deserves your full attention, your full investment. You are a decent player, Goro Akechi, but you want to win too badly.”

She makes her next move.

“Check.”

“Can I smoke here?”

The guy– Goro forgot his name already, despite the habitual, sharply honed attention to detail – is sitting on his kitchen windowsill, one hand on the window latch. Goro’s lease says no smoking, he’s pretty sure, but Goro only nods and perches on a stool, leaning back against the wall. The pretty stranger cracks the window open and lights up.

He’s an objectively alluring sight right now, Goro thinks, all tousled relaxation and sharp collarbones. He’s only wearing an old hoodie from Goro’s closet, unzippered, and the baggy garment makes him look willowy and slight, although his lack of height and poise bring the overall impression closer to scrawny than elegant. Still – Goro’s quite attracted to him, probably. He’s only not sure right now because all his emotions, including attraction, seem far away and blurry, as if hidden behind a cloudy pane of glass.

But – this man is beautiful in his own way, and sweetly sensitive and vocal… And, most temptingly, not complicated. Touching him doesn’t make Goro want to claw his own heart out to serve it up as an offering, and he’s certain seeing someone else touch him wouldn’t cause more than a passing sting of annoyance. It’s a welcome relief.

“Want to come over again? Sometime?” he makes himself ask. That’s what you ask after you have a good time – and he must have, there’s no reason to assume otherwise, even if he can’t tell at the moment.

–the pane of glass shatters into pure white-hot offense when the stranger snorts and says, plainly, “Uh, thanks but no thanks.”

He waves his cigarette at Goro in a placating gesture, responding to the apparently visible indignation. “It’s not like it was bad! Nothing wrong with your performance or whatever. But, you know, you were barely even here. I mean–”

He takes a long drag. Goro waits for him to finish the thought, quiet like a guilty defendant bracing for the verdict.

“It’s just very obvious you want to be somewhere else, with someone else. I don’t think you even enjoyed this, like, at all.”

Goro stares at the ceiling for a few minutes. Admitting this would be giving up on casual dalliances, accepting that he can’t be satisfied with simple, physical intimacy– and he’s so tired of wanting more. Maybe if he pretends this was good, was enough...

Goro walks over to the window and plucks the cigarette out of his guest’s hand. The pull he takes punches a cough out of his lungs – he hasn’t smoked in years, and hasn’t smoked something this cheap and nasty ever in his life. The guy claps him on the back, for either the cough or the yearning, or probably both.

Standing there in silence, sharing a smoke until it burns through, feels more honest than anything before.

The attempt at self-deception fizzles out to cigarette ash.

Yusuke leans his cheek against the cold metal wall.

He hadn’t been back here in years, before that visit with Goro – didn’t have the need, or the urge, to hide away, not since he found his light. He isn’t really hiding away now, either, he’s just–

Yusuke touches the wall next to his face. What he’s doing is chasing the warmth of a memory, as if these walls could hold it for that long. As if standing in the same spot is enough to come back to what it felt like being here with Goro.

There’s a rustle from under the floor.

…Surprising. Yusuke has never seen anyone else here, not once. He doesn’t think anyone but him knows about the place. That is, except–

Goro pokes his upper body through the makeshift trapdoor, and freezes in place when his eyes land on Yusuke.

“What,” he starts. “Uh, what are you doing here…?”

There’s any number of excuses Yusuke could use for that. It’s his secret hideout, after all.

“Missing you,” he says, instead of any of them.

Goro remains locked in place, stuck between a retreat and coming in, fully.

This is the true test, Yusuke thinks. Not during an argument, and not in a fit of despair– if Goro leaves now, he’ll really mean it. Actually mean it.

Goro sighs and climbs in. Stands fidgety still for a long moment, like he doesn’t know what to do with himself– and then steps closer and tucks his forehead into Yusuke’s shoulder. Not an embrace, not quite, but… a request, of sorts.

“Funny coincidence,” he says, muffled. “That’s what I came here for, too.”

Yusuke touches his hair, experimentally. Goro lifts his head–

They lean in for a kiss at the same time. And after, just– hold each other, in clingy relief. For quite a while, until it gets uncomfortable to remain on their feet for so long, and they slide down to huddle against the wall, instead.

“I’m sorry I keep messing it up,” Goro says miserably.

“...I’m sorry I’ve been impatient with you,” Yusuke offers, for his part. “My feelings seem so clear to me, so obvious – it frustrates me, when I can’t manage to convey them. Not enough to… to make you feel loved.”

Goro thumps the back of his head against the wall, lightly.

“It’s not you,” he says, uncomfortable.

“It must be at least partially me,” Yusuke insists. “I know I don’t always notice how my words and patterns of behavior affect people in my life. If there is anything that’s in my power to fix, please tell me. Any detail, anything at all.”

Goro thinks about it. Then wrings his hands, in what seems like abject mortification.

“Alright, maybe– I could name one thing. But it’s not a big deal,” he says.

Yusuke turns his entire body towards him, all attention.

“It’s very silly, I’m aware it is. And insignificant. …Um. But.”

“...Yes?”

“You don’t ever call me ‘love’,” Goro mumbles. “Or– ‘beloved’, or ‘my heart’, or any of the things you call Akira.”

Yusuke considers it, seriously. Does he really deprive Goro of those little endearments? He tries to recall if he’s ever referred to him with an affectionate nickname, and comes up short. He rotates the topic in his mind more, trying to pin down the reason.

“...You don’t call me anything of the sort either,” he points out, on the trail of an explanation.

“Oh. I suppose I don’t,” Goro admits.

Then tries, with awkward effort– “Sorry about that, h. Honey.”

Yusuke scoots closer.

“It’s not too late to start, my love. …My dear. Joy of my heart.”

Goro’s face wobbles with embarrassment, but he holds his own.

“Sweetling,” he counters.

“...Dumpling. Oh!” Yusuke latches onto the food themes. “Pumpkin. Sugarplum.”

Goro barks an undignified giggle.

“Stop it– angel. Kitten. Ew. Foxie?”

“Oh, I like that one!”

The uneven light dances on their faces, glinting off the laughter and the renewed, mutual fondness.

Alright, Yusuke thinks with determination. Alright. We are going to last this time.

They last an even shorter time than the previous attempt.

“I’m sorry– it was an accident, it just slipped out on reflex–” Yusuke scrambles to explain, frantically. He pulls a blanket to his chest, against the chill on his bare skin. “It didn’t mean anything– you have to understand, it’s only because I was feeling– everything at once, in a way that blended together–”

Goro stops him with an agitated hand gesture. “No. Stop explaining, stop saying things, just– ugh!”

He pulls a pant leg on with a too much force. “You have a horrible influence on me, Yusuke Kitagawa, you– you–” he jabs a finger in his direction. “You make a person forget all about pride, or self-respect, or, or basic human dignity. To think I’ve been so desperate as to– I can’t believe I’ve been letting you keep me as a, as a side dish, for when Akira is busy–”

“That is not what’s been happening–”

“Well, it’s not going to be happening anymore!” Goro cuts him off, finally done struggling with the pants. He grabs a shirt without looking and throws it on, wrong side out. “I quit, I’m out, I’m going to just– walk out of here and never come back.” He squeezes his eyes shut for a moment and then turns around, about to follow through with that declaration.

“You can’t do that,” Yusuke says quietly.

“Don’t tell me what I can or cannot–”

“This is your apartment.”

Goro pauses.

“...Oh,” he says. “Right,” – in the tone of someone who definitely knew that, without needing to be reminded. He redoes the buttons on his shirt, fixes them into the correct order.

“...I’m just– going to go for a walk, then.

“Please… please don’t be here when I return.

“...I’ll pay you back for the taxi.”

…After he leaves, Yusuke pats blindly around himself until his hand finds a pillow he could scream into.

“Goro, I have a question.”

“Go ahead.”

“Why aren’t you and Yusuke in a romantic relationship anymore?”

Yeah, he should have guessed she’d ask that. Goro rubs the bridge of his nose.

“It’s complicated,” he tries half-heartedly. As if avoiding a topic has ever worked on Sophia.

She’s not really here, as much as she could ever be anywhere, just on a sort of video call. Making her entirely cloud-based is apparently harder than it sounds, but Ichinose has at least developed a special communication interface for her to keep in contact with everyone.

“But, the two of you love each other.”

“Do we now?”

“My sentiment analysis module is highly advanced, by now. The probability of your feelings being mutual–”

“Alright, whatever. Okay, see, the problem is– well, he loves Akira more.”

“Hmm,” she says, resting her chin on her thumb and index finger, a gesture that Goro suspects she might have copied from him. On her, it looks unfairly adorable. “My research suggests the concept ‘love’ cannot be processed with strictly quantitative metrics.”

“Sophie,” Goro says, “I know you don’t have to talk in robot-speak.”

Sophia tugs on one of her braids, seemingly self-aware enough to be embarrassed.

“It’s how Kuon talks,” she says. “It’s a bit contagious. Also, you are engaging in a ‘deflection’ communication pattern.”

Goro groans.

“Okay, I threw a fit and broke up with him, and now we’re over. Explanation enough?”

“Why did you ‘throw a fit’?”

“Uh– We were– He called– …Basically, I don’t like when he’s thinking about Akira instead of me.”

“Does he not think of you?”

“Not enough.”

“That statement contradicts my world model. Are you sure it’s correct?”

“...Ugh. Alright, it might not be,” Goro admits. “I… may have overreacted.”

“Then, do you want me to generate an apology text for you?”

“Sophia, I don’t think you should be generating apology texts for people. That seems–”

“You’re right. I am humanity’s companion, not its guide. Do you want me to encourage you to write an apology text in a non-invasive advisory manner?”

Goro leans his forehead down on the desk.

“…Sophie,” he says. “Why do you always have to meddle?”

“I’m sorry, Goro. My research suggests ‘meddling’ can be an expression of affection. My feelings confirm that. That means, I have to meddle because I want you and Yusuke to be happy.”

Goro, from down on the desk, makes an incoherent noise of reluctance.

“I can also do a spell check. On your apology text.”

Uuugh.

“Don’t bother,” Goro says, defeated. “...I should probably do it in person.”

Goro can guess what conclusion this conversation will end with the moment Yusuke’s face lights up, as soon as Goro’s meandering explanation gets to ‘I regret–’

Yusuke twirls the tip of a hair strand in his fingers, compulsively. He’s feeling… on edge. And quietly angry about being on edge, over something that should have been an uncomplicated joy. That was an uncomplicated joy, until he remembered he’d need to break the news to Goro.

Maybe it could still be, in the end. Maybe he’s being unfair.

“So, what’s on your mind?” Goro asks mildly, over his busy work breaking up cabbage on the monjayaki griddle.

Of course he noticed something is off, Yusuke thinks with a mollifying rush of fondness. Being the subject of Goro’s sharp and subtle attention is– thrilling, and addicting in a pleasant way.

Until that attention turns cutting over some minor slight, and leads to another close brush against parting ways again. The thought is sobering.

“...It’s getting close to my graduation,” Yusuke starts haltingly.

Goro looks up from the griddle to smile at him. “It is. Congratulations in advance, naturally.”

“Thank you. …But besides the feeling of accomplishment, this event brings up practical concerns.”

“M-m?”

“Yes. Quite reasonably, my stay in the dorms is limited to the term of my enrollment, and thus is now almost over.”

“Oh.” Goro pokes a piece of cabbage. “That makes sense. Do you want me to help with apartment search? It’s an unpleasant task, but– we could make it a date, sweeten the chore a bit.”

This is the risky part. Yusuke breathes in, deeply, through his nose.

“Actually,” he says, “Akira and I are looking for a place together.”

“...Ah,” Goro says after a moment. “Right, of course.”

So far so good. He sounds… resigned, but not confrontational.

Yusuke still notes, with muted unease, the way Goro makes a show out of carefully making the frame for the monjayaki batter, clearly buying time to collect himself.

“Good luck with that, then,” he concludes once apparently ready to sound genuine.

Yusuke pours the batter in and watches it bubble.

“There is one more thing,” he says. “I was… I was wondering if…”

It seems like such an obvious, such a desirable solution, but Akira has shaken Yusuke’s confidence with his gentle ‘It might be too much for him, darling. But– you should ask.’

So he does.

“...If you would be willing to move. As well.”

There.

Goro scoffs skeptically.

“What, Ryuji needs a new roommate that badly? No offense, but that sounds like a horrendous idea. We’d–”

“I mean,” Yusuke interrupts him, “with us. Move in with us.”

Goro drops the spatula. It makes a loud clang, and messes up the cabbage frame a little.

“Live together. With you,” he says with a kind of awe.

Yusuke nods.

“...With you and Akira.”

Yusuke nods again. The motion is tighter, this time.

Goro blinks his face back to functioning.

“...That’s– that’s a recipe for disaster, isn’t it?” he settles on. “The three of us? Come on.”

“You could be a little more open to the idea,” Yusuke says petulantly. “Don’t you– does it mean nothing to you, the opportunity to infuse the love between us with a new kind of closeness?”

Goro’s expression flickers into one of longing, for a second. But his next words are– light. Airily exasperating.

“What a pedestrian view,” he says, “to assume that cohabitation is the pinnacle of relationship progression. Can you add the roe?”

Yusuke sets to dumping the toppings onto the griddle, one by one. “How typically short-sighted,” he frowns. “Surely you can’t deny that changes in the context of day-to-day life can be rather defining, even if it’s not an explosive kind of significance?”

Goro lifts an eyebrow dismissively as he stirs the monjayaki. “To an unimaginative mind, certainly. Excuse me for refusing to reduce romance to basic, chintzy domestication– give me your bowl.”

He piles their servings into the bowls – Yusuke’s first, then his own. Yusuke waits, letting his next retaliatory argument charge up.

Getting into a spat over broad concepts like this is… energizing. And– safe, no matter how disparaging the exchange gets. Much safer than addressing the underlying issue.

Which is, very obviously, the point. It’s not like Yusuke can’t see what Goro’s doing.

He’ll take it.

“You are being deliberately obtuse. The conflation of ‘domestication’ and ‘domesticity’– ahh, this is delectable! The moist texture melts on my tongue, truly life is a gift and a wonder– cannot be taken seriously, and as for the rest of your argument–”

Yusuke practically waltzes into the empty kitchen, full of elated energy. It spills out into opening and closing the cupboards, leaning, for a moment, on the windowsill to look out on their new street, and finally doing a little twirl and hopping onto a counter, carried by the inertial power of the motion.

“Learning from Morgana?” Akira smiles, leaning against the doorway. “Don’t take his spot.”

“We’ll share. I can sit wherever I like,” Yusuke announces. “It’s our kitchen.” He swings his long legs back and forth, happily. “Our kitchen, Akira!”

Akira wants to kiss him so badly his entire body tingles. And– why shouldn’t he? Yusuke can sit wherever he likes, and Akira can kiss his boyfriend whenever he wants, in their kitchen.

Yusuke was onto something – the phrase is intoxicating.

“Our kitchen,” Akira tries out loud, and acts on his earlier impulse. The kiss is a little awkward, with the way Yusuke can’t stop smiling against his lips, but still overwhelmingly sweet. Akira breaks off for a second, and then kisses him again, unable to stay away.

Loud voices ring out from a couple flights of stairs down, behind the open apartment door.

“Hey!”

“Lovebirds, both of you!”

“Get back here and help move your shit!”

A quieter voice – “Oh, it’s no bother–”

“No-o, don’t let them slack off, put it down…!”

“That looks heavy…”

“Akira, why do you even have a giant naked statue?”

“Who is that at this hour– oh.”

Yusuke stands in the hallway of her apartment building, the expression on his face tethering between heartbreak and fury. Ann sucks in a sympathetic breath.

“Goro?”

He nods, rapidly, a couple times. Lifts his hands and crosses the index fingers into an “X” gesture, as if finishing a meal at a restaurant. Or– announcing an end. His lower lip wobbles.

Ann huffs in indignant commiseration.

“Again?!”

“Yusuke, have you seen the book I was reading?”

“What was it?”

“No longer human, a kind of purplish cover–”

“...Oh,” Yusuke says, for some reason abashed. “It didn’t occur to me that could be yours.”

Akira makes a questioning noise. “Who else’s? Morgana can’t turn the pages, you know.” Not easily, at least. They’ve been trying to contrive some kind of gizmo to help him, but so far ‘reading over Akira’s shoulder’ remains the most convenient option.

Yusuke shakes his head instead of answering. “I– oh, let me just get it for you.”

He goes into the bedroom, and Akira follows, curiously. Raises his eyebrows when Yusuke drags a pouffe to the wardrobe – there are few places in the room Yusuke wouldn’t be able to reach without assistance.

The farthest corner of the topmost shelf is one, though. Yusuke pulls down a cardboard box and slams it onto the floor, unceremoniously.

“Please don’t think me too petty for this,” he mutters. His ears, Akira notes, are burning red. “It had brought forth too many– inconvenient feelings, to see any of these items.”

Akira reaches out and lifts the lid. Morgana, apparently attracted by the commotion, ducks his head under his arm to get a look too.

Akira’s No longer human lies at the top, stashed away together with… a random assortment of stuff. A couple hair ties. A toothbrush. Socks, two and a half pairs. A keychain, half of a matching set. A stack of notes, in familiar handwriting – the topmost is origami-folded into an envelope shape with a little heart in it, and addressed to ‘Foxie’.

“Yusuke…” Akira looks up. Yusuke doesn’t meet his eye– or, rather, takes care not to look inside the box. His gaze still flicks to it, for a second, and that second is enough to change his expression to stricken sorrow.

“Jeez,” Morgana says, under his breath. “Those two…”

Akira shuffles the items in the box, considering. There is another book in there, or– no, a magazine? Doesn’t matter.

“Hey, I think Goro was looking for this, actually,” Akira says.

Yusuke looks down, hesitantly. “...Really?”

“Yeah. Needed it for school, I think.”

“Seemed important,” Morgana confirms. Akira makes a mental note to buy some fatty tuna.

Yusuke steps off the pouffe and squats down next to them. Akira pushes the magazine into his hands.

“Should I return it?” Yusuke says, uncertainly. “I’ll– I’ll message him, I suppose. He can pick it up, if it matters that much. ‘Feather-fan handbook’...? For school?”

Akira shrugs, in a ‘don’t ask me’ gesture. And then yawns, wide and performative. “You do that,” he says. “I gotta take a nap.”

Morgana curls up to his chest, a familiar warm pressure. Akira waits until Yusuke’s closed the bedroom door to pull out his phone– he’s too awake to just lie there with no distractions.

“Can we watch something?” Morgana whispers. “With subtitles,” Akira responds, at the same low volume.

Halfway into the video essay, there is the sound of the doorbell ringing. Akira puts the video on pause, and both of them perk their ears.

The conversation is muffled, from behind the door. Akira catches, “...Thanks?” and, “...Don’t mention it.” Then a long pause. Then– “You arrived with such urgency. Is this… really that important to you?” then another pause. A reluctant “...Always.” An incredulous “This… gaudy publication?” and a “What? No, I– Not the handbook– …Never mind.”

Then yet another long pause.

And then, breathy and rushed, “Please let me take it back, I didn’t mean it, I love you–” overlapping with, just as desperate, “Can we stop this madness, I miss you so much–”

Akira quietly lifts his hand for a high-five, and Morgana taps it with his paw.

[Panther: okay question]

[Oracle: why the secret chat]

[Panther: because]

[Panther: planning the big pt camping trip w mako]

[Violet: I’m looking forward to it!]

[Panther: me too!!]

[Panther: but]

[Panther: tent assignments HELP]

[Queen: We have an uneven number of people, and someone will have to sleep three per tent.]

[Panther: ya and she said that should be yusuke’s harem]

[Skull: makes sense]

[Panther: but]

[Panther: do we know for sure they’re not broken up rn.]

[Panther: because could get awkwardddd]

[Noir: …Oh, I see the problem]

[Skull: ann i thought youd know]

[Panther: …im not like]

[Panther: one HUNDRED percent sure]

[Panther: (⁠ ⁠；⁠∀⁠；⁠)]

[Queen: And I have lost track entirely, to be honest.]

[Skull: no hold up]

[Skull: we were drinking at xrds the other day and yusuke DIDNT start spouting weird sad poetry]

[Skull: so prolly fine?]

[Noir: But that was two weeks ago…]

[Noir: Can we be certain things have not changed?]

…

[Queen: …Anyone?]

[Oracle: still ~respecting privacy~]

[Oracle: (⁠눈⁠‸⁠눈⁠)]

[Violet: Please don’t ask me]

…

[Panther: uugh gonna have to ping akira]

[Oracle: oh shit wait]

[Oracle: i have an expert right here duh]

[Oracle: one sec]

…

[Oracle: okay monya says they’re still together]

[Oracle: … He Thinks]

…

(Several people are typing…)

Chapter Text

“Goro!”

Someone is shaking his shoulder, from beyond the nightmare.

“Goro, you need to wake up!”

Goro shoots awake all at once, with a wet gasp. He’s– in his childhood apartment, all one room no bedrooms, flooded with red evening light– no, wait, he’s in the Metaverse, and– no, he’s walking down a corridor– or, no, he’s in Shido’s office–

Something touches his cheek, careful. “You were crying in your sleep,” a dear voice says gently.

Goro flinches away.

“Don’t touch me!” he chokes out, and scoots further away. Tries to curl into a ball and become smaller, as small as possible. Waits for his breathing to even out, but it’s refusing to, because Yusuke isn’t touching him anymore but he’s still too near, too close–

“Please go away,” Goro babbles, “go far away, you can’t be here, it’s not safe–”

“...I feel perfectly safe, here with you,” Yusuke says, unshakably certain past the worry.

“You shouldn’t!”

Yusuke’s weight on the bed shifts distressingly closer.

“Why shouldn’t I?”

“Because I’m–,” Goro says, into his knees, “I’m cursed.”

After a moment of consideration, there is a touch on his shoulder again. Light, static – but so grounding. So wanted. Goro takes another wet indrawn breath and doesn’t flinch away this time, selfishly.

“Curses are a matter of gods and fates, and I should hope we’re finally done with them,” Yusuke says softly.

“I ruin everything I touch,” Goro counters. “I leave a trail of fucking destruction in my wake, starting from my cursed birth–”

He uncurls a little as he talks, because it’s difficult to get words out from the balled-up position, and Yusuke takes the opportunity to pull on his shoulder and flip him onto his back. Before Goro can react, he climbs on top of him, pins his hips down with his weight and pins his entire self down with the piercing power of his gaze. His eyes are luminous in the faint moonlight.

“You have yet to ruin me,” Yusuke says. “And you won’t, because you have no desire to, and your hold on your decisions is firm. Is it not?”

Goro makes a tiny, breathless noise. He’s trying to remember how to blink.

“It’s up to you to choose what you are now, Goro. And you have been, consistently, for years now, choosing to be someone I’m safe with. More than safe.”

“...You’re too good for me,” Goro whispers. “I don’t want to taint you.”

“Please do,” Yusuke says with earnest solemnity. He reaches down and splays his fingers over Goro’s sternum, as if trying to reach past his skin, as if normal touch is not enough. “I want the imprint of your soul carved into mine, my love. I want… I want you to carve it anew every day, lest it ever fades. Every day, for the rest of our lives.”

There is a touch of imploring desperation to the last words, of unvoiced doubt. Goro doesn’t notice, couldn’t possibly notice past the overwhelmed, dizzying pounding of his own heart.

Yusuke wasn’t planning on bringing it up again. Wasn’t even aware it was still on his mind at all, much less with such a heavy weight. But–

But they duck into some random restaurant, hiding from the wind chill and hoping to rest a moment, and it’s a monjayaki place. And Goro says, “Oh, good,” and gets them a table, and fills the time before the ingredients arrive with small talk. And then a waitress in a hideous apron brings their food, and Goro starts frying off the cabbage, and Yusuke–

Gets a feeling of deja vu.

And with it, one of aching uncertainty, mixed with exhaustion. Mixed with irritation.

“–and it’s apparently an instant classic, now. I have to say I’m intrigued to see what all the fuss is about. We could watch it together, if you want?”

“I’d love to,” Yusuke says, distracted.

“Tonight?” Goro asks casually.

And Yusuke doesn’t actually have plans for tonight, and a movie evening sounds– comforting, and pleasant, whether they actually watch it or get sidetracked by wandering hands. But his unsettled mood buzzes around his mind, and he feels an impulse to prod it. Doesn’t know what he wants more– to banish it or to confirm, with sticky vindication, that it’s not unfounded.

“Not tonight,” he says.

“…Tonight, I’m going home to Akira.”

And there it is – a subtle flinch, Goro’s fingers tightening on the spatula.

“...Another day, then,” is all he says. Commendable recovery, but the test has already been failed.

“...You could come home with me,” Yusuke says quietly. “Anytime. The offer still stands.”

“...What, of living together?” Goro frowns. “I thought we’ve agreed that’s a bad idea.”

“You agreed. I simply… let your avoidance of the question slide.”

Goro moves the cabbage around, his expression growing tight.

“I don’t see why it’s relevant,” he says, carefully. “You’re always welcome at my place. Isn’t that enough?”

“I can tell,” Yusuke says, steel-sharp, “that you yourself don’t believe it is.”

Goro reaches over to get the batter from Yusuke’s side of the table. Pours it onto the griddle, just to have something to do with his hands.

“...Maybe so,” he concedes. “But it will have to be. Enough.”

“Does it have to?” Yusuke presses. “There is, quite clearly, another option.”

Goro holds a long pause. “I am… honored you’re asking, sweetheart, I really am,” he tries, eventually. “It makes me happy, just to know that’s something you would want. But it’s… safer. For me to keep my own space.”

“Why?” Yusuke asks, louder and more forceful than he intended.

“I… don’t think I’m ready. To be around– the two of you, with the way you are. Every day.”

Yusuke’s patience keeps unraveling with surprising speed, like he’s pulled on a tiny loose thread on a sweater and now cannot stop.

“It has been years, Goro. Has been months since I last asked. Will you ever be ready?”

“I– can’t say, honestly. Maybe…? But– is it that necessary? I… I’m content with what we do have, on my side. Aren’t you?”

Yusuke makes a noncommittal noise. Goro hisses in a breath.

“...Alright, what’s wrong, then? With the way things are now?” he asks, sounding hurt.

…It’s not that something is wrong, exactly. Being with Goro is– it makes Yusuke’s heart sing. Makes him feel seen and adored, and desperately invested in the rich tapestry of complex thoughts and feelings and ideas they’re crafting together, borrowing materials from each other. It’s going well. He’s happy with Goro.

He’s happy– and afraid to lose it. And tired, so tired of looking over his shoulder in case Goro decides to pour gasoline on their lovers’ nest again.

“Nothing,” Yusuke says, flatly, “is wrong. Except for how you refuse to commit to anything.”

Goro’s face crumples a bit more.

“I’m committed to you,” he says quietly.

“Are you?” Yusuke challenges.

There was an entire reservoir of stagnant water in his heart, apparently. It all comes pouring out now.

“Are you really, or are you waiting for another last straw, another excuse to leave? Is that why you refuse to move in with us, so you don’t end up stranded after the inevitable falling out? Do you expect it to happen, even now?”

Goro stands up from his seat, agitated. “It’s not like that,” he insists. “I don’t want to leave you, I’m not planning to, it’s just the living arrangements that–”

Yusuke gets up, too.

“Because you still can’t accept not being the only one in my heart. Is that not the reason?”

“...Kind of, but–”

“Then you can’t accept me,” Yusuke says, with heat that makes his eyes sting.

“...And in that case– maybe the smartest thing,” he continues. There’s a burning smell in the air, and it feels like more than just their forgotten monjayaki. “Would be to leave first. On my terms.”

“Yusuke–”

Yusuke turns away from him. “Don’t.”

His seat was closer to the exit. It only takes a couple steps.

Goro runs after him. “Yusuke, wait–”

Yusuke stops for just long enough to say, again, “Don’t. Don’t follow me.”

His voice is strained, but unrelenting.

“Not until– not unless you get a handle on your doubts and insecurities. I’m– I’m sick of weathering them, Goro.”

[Saw a ginkgo tree on my way home that reminded me

[The 777 near my place has some really good promo deals right now do you w

[It’s not FAIR that I miss you so much and you don’t have to miss me when you have

[I’m sorry for

[You can’t ask me for even more understanding when I already

[I know I’m not

[please can we t

Yusuke’s hand grabs onto Haru’s skirt as she gets up from the booth seat.

“...Oh, I’m sorry, Yu-chan,” she says apologetically. “But I really have to take this. I– won’t be long?”

He looks almost panicked as she leaves. Shrinks back in his seat, as if to put more distance between him and Goro.

Haru’s phone call has left only the two of them in the karaoke room (Akira’s on a snack run, and Ann and her girlfriend have been in the bathroom for a suspiciously long time). Thinking back, this might in fact be the first time they’ve been alone together, since… since Yusuke finally got fed up with him.

Goro never realized that was deliberate.

“What, you can’t even be alone with me?” he bites out.

“I’d rather not, yes,” Yusuke says with controlled effort. “I have my pride too, you know.”

Goro huffs a short breath through his nose. Resists the urge to roll his eyes.

“Even now, already my resolve to not beg is crumbling,” Yusuke adds, sullenly, to himself.

…Wait, what?

“Huh?” Goro asks, eloquently.

Yusuke lets out a sigh with a whining quality to it, like a very small puppy. “I–” he starts. His fingers clench, white-knuckled, on the edge of the table. “Oh, alright! Alright, I should never have pushed you!”

He lets go of the table to flick his hair back in a restless, frustrated gesture.

“The entire premise of our relationship was rejecting the hold of rules of romance, but, but despite that, I let myself get so– so fixated on an arbitrary milestone that I shoved you away, when that is the last thing I want, when– and you did nothing to provoke it, nothing but ask for a little patience, a little adaptability, and I–”

His voice is starting to tremble.

Goro smashes his thigh into the edge of the table in his rush to reach for him. The bruise takes weeks to fade.

“Hey, I got– hm? Why are you two out here?”

“Make-out session in there,” Shiho says seriously, leaning against the hallway wall. “We didn’t want to interrupt.”

“Some people have no shame,” Ann says, and shakes her head as if her own lipstick is not incriminatingly smudged.

[Gororo: Hello]

[Gororo: Are you planning on making chocolates for Valentine’s Day this year?]

[yea I always do]

Goro types for a long while, as if writing and erasing multiple drafts. Akira wonders what that’s about.

[Gororo: would you be willing to teach me]

Akira whistles.

Morgana paws at his hand, typically nosy. Akira shows him the screen, and he squints at the words before humming an impressed ‘ooo’.

“Does he realize you two working together is the best part of the gift?”

“Right?” Akira agrees.

He does realize that, probably. It’s not like Akira is the only person he could ask for help, after all.

He sends a thumbs up. Then thinks for a moment, and adds,

[let’s do cookies too the kind with jam]

[can we use your kitchen?]

[(⁠=⁠^⁠•⁠ﻌ⁠•⁠⁠^⁠=⁠)]

“No,” Yusuke says, in distress, watching Goro’s attempt at constructing the shape of a teakettle. “No, your lines are all wrong–”

“I thought I understood the basics by now,” Goro says defensively. He’s been watching Yusuke draw for years – is he really that bad?

“You’re following the correct process, but your movements are too stiff, you are practically shackled by your caution– no, that won’t do at all.”

Yusuke snatches Goro’s sketch away and replaces it with a clean sheet of paper.

“I want you to draw a line.”

“A straight line?”

“Straight or wiggly, it’s no matter, but try to do it in a single motion, alright?”

Goro touches the pencil to paper, uncertainly. He prepares to swing his hand into a smooth stroke, tries to do it like moving under Call of Chaos – doesn’t manage to. Just as he starts putting the line to paper, his resolve fizzles out into overcorrection, trying too hard to achieve a good result.

Goro frowns at the sheet. He gets what the problem is, now, but it’s like his mind is blocking him from moving his hand more confidently.

He tries again. And again. And again. And again.

“Better,” Yusuke says thoughtfully. “But I can hear the crackle of impending burnout – technical exercises like this can quickly become demoralizing if you’re not motivated. We need to work on your apprehension first.”

He replaces the sheet again and steps away for a second, to do something with his other materials – comes back with a little tray of a deep blue liquid.

“Now, throw this at the paper,” he instructs.

“Just…?”

“Exactly, just let the chance of the splatter guide your hand.”

Goro holds onto the tray carefully, and then throws. The ink blooms into a vague blob.

“Was that fun?” Yusuke asks with a lilt like the beginning of a smile.

It… kind of was. Yusuke mixes him more trays, in different colors, and Goro throws them all at new sheets of paper, the motion becoming freer with every attempt.

“...But those are just– splotches,” he points out. “Not art.”

“Let’s make them into art, then. Look at your bases and think: what does this bring to mind? What images does this inspire you to?”

Goro squints at the blobs.

“Is this where I say this looks like mommy and daddy fighting?” he asks wryly.

“If you like,” Yusuke agrees with perfect seriousness. “It’s entirely up to you to decide.”

Alright. Goro tilts his head, considering the splashes of colorful ink with unironic attention.

“...This one kind of looks like you, actually,” he says.

“Does it?”

“With– you know, the tail. And– this would be legs. Arm, raised.”

“Ah, I think I can see it! Now then: as it dries, focus on visualizing the image you came up with, keep it clear in your imagination so it comes to you easier when it’s time to transfer it to paper.”

“Yeah, because I don’t think about you enough as it is,” Goro drawls, and is rewarded with a quick kiss as Yusuke sits down on the chair next to his.

They both stare at the ink splatter. Vaguely Fox-shaped ink splatter, apparently. It’s quiet.

“Feeling better about the part-time now?” Goro hazards. “You can always practice on me more, if you need to. But– this here seems like a great exercise to start with, for your first class.”

“...I do feel better,” Yusuke says wistfully. “This brings back memories – as I feared, yes, but these are… untainted, despite everything. The joy of discovery, of creation that I felt as a child, the safe and curious feeling of these seeds being nurtured by a trusted hand… This is something I can use for inspiration, after all. Something I can attempt to replicate, now.”

“...I’ll never understand why you insist on holding onto memories of that man,” Goro grumbles. After all these years, he’s still unable to resist a jab at the topic.

Yusuke touches the ink carefully, checking if it’s dry. “These are not for him to ruin,” he says simply. “Whatever else he took from me, this remains mine.”

After a moment, the small smile on his face fades. Yusuke fidgets with his hands, the anxiety clearly not entirely exorcized yet.

“...I will not succumb to that kind of corruption, will I?” he asks quietly. “Makoto is right that I do need a… ‘stable supplementary source of income’, but– putting my hands on something as precious as the first steps of a fledgling artist, and with the explicit intention to earn money from it–”

“Yusuke. Listen,” Goro interrupts.

He understands the worry, viscerally. And that understanding is what makes it starkly clear Yusuke’s in no danger of what he fears. Goro just needs to convey that.

He takes a deep breath and says, “...Take it from the expert on becoming your father.”

Yusuke’s eyes snap to him, wide at the candid honesty.

Yeah, well, Goro thinks. For you.

“You will be fine,” he continues, words coming easier now. “Madarame does not have the monopoly on the role of an art teacher. It’s time– it’s time you took that back for yourself, too.”

“...And my studies are going well. I feel… more motivated, actually motivated now. I find that I don’t mind getting an imperfect grade if I retained something worthwhile from the class itself. We have been doing these mockup project planning meetings, and I… I can see myself doing that all the time, I think. I can… look forward to it, even.

“It helps, also, that I don’t want to strangle half my yearmates this time.”

Goro puts the flowers down and sits down himself, in seiza, not thinking about getting dirt on his clothes.

“...The person I’ve been telling you about,” he says, quieter now, careful. “That’s… going well, too. The… years of learning how to fit together better, all of us together, have been– making it easier. Wearing down the bumps in the road that we kept crashing on, before.”

He abandons the proper position to pull his knees up instead, hug his arms around them.

“I love him,” he says, even more softly. “I really love him.” Drops down to a whisper– “And– I almost– I think I believe him, by now, when he says he loves me back. He’s making it easy, to believe it.”

The incense smoke wafts upwards, listening.

“It’s going so well.”

He leans his cheek down on his knees. Adds, almost inaudible now– “...I’m scared.”

Goro’s still awake, surprisingly – half-sitting in the bed, watching Yusuke’s sleeping face with an unreadable expression. Akira knocks on the doorframe, gently, to bring him out of his thoughts.

“Not sleeping?” he mouths. He’s going through a bartending phase, and usually everyone’s out cold by the time he comes back from his shifts.

Goro sighs and stares at the ceiling for a while. Then looks at Akira, questioningly, and makes a gesture like walking his fingers through air.

Akira nods and turns around to go put his shoes back on.

If Goro wanted to talk, he doesn’t manage to go through with it, just walks quietly with Akira around the block. Akira, being Akira, doesn’t push first.

It’s only when they’re almost back to their building that Goro speaks.

“Is this, like…” he says, atypically clumsy in his expression. “You know. Forever?”

“If you want it to be,” Akira replies easily.

He knows what he wants, for himself. He’s known for a long time, now.

“Sure. Another time.”

“...Is there a problem with that?”

“Oh, only the humiliation of having to scavenge for leftover scraps of your attention while Akira gets first pick rights–”

“What! Where is this coming from?”

“Why do we always have to plan around his schedule? Is it too much to ask to pretend that’s not a factor, for once?”

“You are being ridiculous. I’m with you right now, aren’t I?”

“For an hour of a lunch date, in between being too busy with all the other, more interesting parts of your life to even reply to my messages–”

“I was asleep!”

“Oh, sorry, did Akira keep you up late yesterday? Exciting night?”

“Goro, will you stop this?!”

“I can stop this alright– I can stop this whole thing, like I should have from the start!”

Yusuke makes a small, exasperated and wounded sound. They both have managed to keep their voices down, to avoid attracting attention from other people in the coffee shop, but their breathing is fast and heavy, stressed out.

“Seriously?” Yusuke hisses, more incredulous than upset. “Over something this petty? Again? I thought we were past this, this… immaturity. …Aren’t we?”

Goro heaves a sigh.

Maybe not entirely, but they have been more ‘past it’ than ever before. Sparks of conflict like this have been going out in seconds, dead on arrival, starved of oxygen they could burn through.

Just recently, when Akira and Yusuke (and Morgana) were planning a family trip with the Sakuras, Goro didn’t feel like hitting something at the thought of them sharing a hotel room, or going sightseeing hand in hand. When he said, ‘Send pictures, then,’ there wasn’t an ounce of passive aggression in the phrase – only a bit of hope, maybe, that someone will take good pictures of Yusuke specifically. Like the other day, when Akira sent one to the group chat and Goro set it as his lock screen, and forgot to care he was not the one behind the camera.

“...I’m not really mad you have plans,” he admits. “But– but I meant it, just now. I should have stopped this from the start, for both our sakes.”

“Don’t decide for me,” Yusuke says, cautious. The angry intensity of the argument has settled down, but the air still smells of ozone.

“You decided yourself, you just rolled it back. But you were right, earlier, when… the last time we broke up. You were right that it’s always a matter of time before this detonates.

“There’s a reason for that. There’s a reason we haven’t been working out, while you and Akira are steady as a rock.”

“...Let’s hear it, then,” Yusuke says with an air of resignation.

“It’s because–”

After Goro arrived to pick them up from Leblanc, as he waited for Futaba and Yusuke to finish bickering over the itinerary, Sojiro Sakura took him aside. Said, in his gruff voice, ‘You know, I can still call the tour company. Ask them to add one more person.’

Goro froze, rooted to the spot. ‘I– Sakura-san, I thought you knew… who I am.’

‘Make no mistake, I won’t ever forget that. But... that’s far from the only thing you are, kid. Futaba likes you, in her way. Akira definitely likes you. And, well–’ he rubbed the back of his neck, as though that would make his next worlds less heartfelt, ‘Akira’s artist boy is pretty much family by now. The way I see it, that makes you family too.’

And then Goro stammered out some excuse about being busy that week and made a hasty retreat, pretended he needed something from the convenience store next door. And then spent the next few days flinching from Yusuke’s touch and thinking, all the way,

“This doesn’t make any sense.”

Yusuke frowns.

“What doesn’t…?”

“Us,” Goro wishes he sounded hysterical, but he only feels a cutting kind of clarity. “We don’t make any sense. You and Akira do, everyone knows you two are perfect together. But you and I are just–”

“Goro–”

“We don’t make any sense. I– you’re… very important to me. And I can’t deny we’re drawn to each other, obviously we are. But we’ve been wasting time on a doomed effort.”

“Avert its doom, then!” Yusuke finally raises his voice. “Do you really intend to just give up–?”

“Yes,” Goro says, so seriously it brings Yusuke up short.

The conversation stalls, then. And doesn’t pick up again.

Morgana skips the family trip and insists on staying over at Goro’s for the week, demanding to be ‘cat-sitted’. Goro grumbles about the cat card being played only when convenient, but orders every single kind of sushi Morgana points to.

They both eat so much they get nauseous. It’s hard to feel lonely while you’re busy trying not to barf, so Goro is, quietly, grateful.

This year, on Valentine’s, instead of listening to Taylor Swift, Goro spends the day in the kitchen, trying to follow what instructions he remembers from last time.

The next day, when Yusuke looks at the box he hands him with hopeful expectation, Goro shakes his head.

“Giri-choko,” he says. “As thanks. For– for everything. For being in my life. And–” he pulls out another box from his bag, adds it on top of the first one. “Pass this along to Akira, too.”

“Hey,” Akira says as he’s walking him to the station. Goro should have guessed that was for a conversation, but– sometimes Akira just likes to walk with people. It’s not that suspicious.

“So,” he continues, “are you and Yusuke going to get back together anytime soon?”

Goro stumbles over his feet, and is distracted for a moment with trying to make the motion look somehow natural.

“Why are you asking?” he hedges, unwilling to make forecasts.

Akira doesn’t respond immediately.

“I just– genuinely don’t want us to step on each other’s toes, okay?” he says in the end. “So if you’re working up to a big gesture, more power to you, but, uh, keep me posted? So we don’t… derail each other’s plans. On accident.”

Goro feels, suddenly, chilly.

“...What plans?” he asks, forcing himself to bite the bullet.

Akira looks down with a small smile, his face lighting up with a happy, bashful glow. He pauses in his tracks to swing his backpack forward for a minute, dig around in it for something.

Goro’s bad feeling gets worse.

“These,” Akira says simply, and presents a small square box.

It shouldn’t have been a surprise. It shouldn’t have. Akira and Yusuke make so much sense.

“...When did you buy it?” Goro asks in a weak voice. It’s not like that changes anything, but– he wants to know for how long Akira’s side of their V-shaped connection was quietly this much stronger, this much more forward-looking.

“Oh,” Akira says, “ages ago. Back when– with Mementos funds. That does mean it’s– you know, cheap as shit, comparatively, but I thought–”

“I see,” Goro says, sounding distant.

“...Goro,” Akira sighs, losing his sparkle for the moment. “Look, I get it. But– that doesn’t have to come between the two of you, in any way. I’m not trying to… stake a claim of exclusivity, or anything.”

“Don’t worry about that,” Goro says, in the same far-away tone.

Akira puts the ring box back in the backpack but doesn’t resume walking, yet. Stands there, awkwardly. Rubs his shoulder.

“This can wait, too,” he offers. “I’m– I was putting it off until I’m ‘ready’, but I now I think I’ve been, so– but it can wait more. Until you two figure it out. I don’t mind.”

“No, you should go ahead,” Goro says, firmly despite the fog in his head. “I’m… I’m stepping out of this.”

This is all– too big. Too big, too much, comes too easy to Akira for Goro to feel comfortable taking his tottering steps next to him.

“You don’t need to,” Akira insists. “Nobody wants you to. Not me, and certainly not Yusuke.”

“...No, I’m out,” Goro says again. And then, with a steel note of finality – “Take care of him, Akira.”

Chapter Text

“How decadent, having the entire place to ourselves,” Yusuke smiles in wonder, looking around the tiny restobar.

He has been here before – Akira’s been working here a lot, lately, and apparently in several capacities, if the accounting spreadsheets he keeps poring over are any indication – but never like this. Right now, Yusuke’s table is the only one set, with the restaurant closed to the public, entirely empty except for the two of them. A perk of being such a useful employee, Yusuke guesses – or, for him, a perk of being Akira’s boyfriend. One of many, many perks.

Akira grins at him from the open kitchen. It’s a charming design decision, and, Yusuke suspects, the reason Akira likes it here so much – he’s always preferred to be able to show off his cooking moves, rather than be sequestered away to a separate kitchen. He looks dashing over there, in his crisp black uniform, the shelves of the bar’s alcohol selection rounding up the palette of the background pleasantly; Yusuke raises his fingers into a frame shape, on instinct. Akira visibly preens.

“A three-course menu,” he announces grandly, and Yusuke claps in excitement and encouragement.

“To start with – mango salad with sesame ginger dressing!”

That’s from this place’s menu, and something Yusuke kept asking for when he’d come here to be around Akira. Of course Akira took note. Yusuke’s heart fills with familiar warmth.

“So, how was your day?” Akira asks, while assembling the ingredients – most of them are already prepared and refrigerated, so as to be served nice and cold. The question is familiar, too – Yusuke launches into a story about one of his youngest students accidentally leaving a paint-handprint on her canvas, and the way Yusuke had to organize the rest of the class to incorporate the same into their own work on purpose, before the girl could burst into tears. Akira listens with characteristic attention.

“It ended up quite a striking motif,” Yusuke concludes, as Akira serves him the finished bowl with a flourish. While Yusuke digs in, Akira takes care to pour him a glass of wine, too – he’s really going all out tonight, isn’t he? Yusuke feels a fleeting instinct to balk at being pampered so, but it doesn’t stick. This sort of treatment is too nice to refuse, and Akira himself enjoys every moment of it too clearly.

“What’s next on your menu, then?” he asks curiously, as Akira returns to his spot at the stove.

Akira arranges a new set of ingredients on his work station. His smile turns more self-satisfied. “Kushikatsu.”

“Kushikatsu!” Yusuke gasps.

He doesn’t think he’s eaten those Osaka-style skewers again since that one time on their road trip, when Akira learned to make them just to indulge his craving. The idea of them holds these memories now, stores the summer heat and the still novel at the time, heart-fluttering miracle of being in love and loved in return, so much.

…That trip, Yusuke thinks with a stab of pain, was also when we finally, at long last, really got to know Goro. Those memories resurface easily, too – Goro’s recalcitrant participation in group discussions; the subtle change in his hair color and attitude after all the time in the sun; fighting next to him, side by side, in castles and futuristic cities and on a platform in the sky, learning, more and more efficiently, to synergize.

Yusuke shakes the melancholy away, setting it aside lest it interfere with the date. He may not care for rules of romance, but he has been practicing, with increasing success rates, recognizing when the moment calls for his undistracted presence. He can be wistful about Goro later, even into Akira’s shoulder, if he wants, but this evening should be just about the two of them.

Right now, with Akira, Yusuke wants to hear about him. Akira, generally, prefers to listen and to react, but there is a rhythm to drawing out his own thoughts.

Start with an observation. “You seem somehow more relaxed, lately.”

Akira takes a moment as if to verify, internally, that Yusuke’s correct, and then nods with a small smile. Yusuke watches him assemble the skewers and coat them in egg and flour mixture – it’s captivating, watching him work.

Now try a direct question. “Was there some weight on your mind, before?”

Akira thinks a little again. “I think I was waiting for my life to click into place,” he confesses. “Waiting to have all the answers. But lately, I feel like,” he drops the first couple skewers into the oil, already sizzling, “it’s fine if I don’t know what I should be doing. It doesn’t matter that much, as long as I’m figuring it out by your side.”

Yusuke smiles at him, his heart blooming into responding agreement. Akira’s not looking back, focused on watching the skewers, but the love flows between them unimpeded, either way.

“So I’m not putting things off anymore,” Akira concludes. At Yusuke’s “What kind of things, then?” he only shrugs enigmatically.

“Things,” he clarifies unhelpfully, and serves up the kushikatsu, beautifully plated with cabbage and lemon. Yusuke feels his mouth water, and the conversation is put on hold so that he can appreciate the meal with the dedication it deserves.

“...Akira, this is unspeakably, unconscionably good,” he manages after several minutes of silent enjoyment. “Such perfect crispiness– I can hardly believe a meal like this could exist–”

“Are you crying again?” Akira asks, entertained.

“Did I cry last time?”

“Tears of joy.”

“These are tears of joy, too–! And gratitude, and awe– oh, Akira, if you cook for me every day I will be the happiest man in the universe!”

“Alright,” Akira says with such gravity Yusuke pauses mid-bite to let that promise seep into his bones.

Akira’s starting on the third course, now, having set up the workstation for the dessert. Yusuke hums a questioning noise at him, eyes sparkling, and Akira announces, “Cherries jubilee.”

Yusuke isn’t familiar with that one, so he leans his chin on his hands and watches, intrigued. Akira has some kind of berry mixture simmering in a skillet, and as he feels Yusuke’s eyes on him, he adds some more flair to his movements – currently, zesting a lemon right into the skillet with a little handheld grater, flicking his wrist like he’s playing a tiny violin. Yusuke leans forward, to see better.

“Now watch,” Akira says with a wink, and reaches for a bottle of– some kind of liquor, it seems, that he has set out near the stove. It has a long metal topper on, so Akira doesn’t need to bother with opening it before he raises it up in a deft, showy arc and tips it over, into the skillet.

–the alcohol catches on fire immediately, flaming into a column so high it hides Akira from view, for a moment. Yusuke jumps to his feet, shocked– but he’s not the only one to react with alarm.

Or rather, not the only thing. The lights abruptly cut off, and the flambé fire gets extinguished by a sudden downpour from the ceiling, the automatic sprinkler system switching on.

Yusuke rushes over to Akira, anxious to check on him in the wet darkness. “My love,” he calls out, turning the corner of the chef workstation to reach for him, “are you alright–?”

In lieu of answering, Akira picks him up and lifts him onto the counter, even though this is not their kitchen, and kisses him deep and breathless, adrenaline-fueled. Yusuke relaxes into the implied unhurt safety, kisses back in passionate relief, heedless of the flood drenching their hair and clothes. Akira’s lips taste like tap water.

The sprinklers click off, automatically. Akira breaks off for a breath and lightly headbutts Yusuke’s forehead.

“You started a rain indoors,” he complains in a whisper. Yusuke laughs out loud.

“Don’t you put this on me, it’s all you and your– your daredevil cooking,” he counters, and kisses him again.

“But it’s your thing,” Akira says, a smile in his voice too. “Bringing rain.”

Yusuke reaches over and takes his glasses off – real, by now. Tries, with moderate success, to wipe them clean of water droplets with the hem of his wet shirt.

“Will you get in trouble?” he asks, regretfully.

“Nah,” Akira shakes his head. “The owners love me.”

“We have a lot in common, then.”

Akira, in the meantime, pulls away to go bring some illumination back to the room. Rather than switching the power back on, he gets a whole armful of tealights from the store room and sets them all around the restaurant, their tiny flames glinting off wet furniture. Yusuke tries a cherry from the soupy mess in the skillet – rather tasty, even like this.

“Do you know,” Akira asks, “what people call sunshowers sometimes?”

Yusuke thinks about it. “The fox’s wedding, was it?” He chuckles at the implied pun. “But this is hardly a sunshower.”

“Why not?”

For one thing, it’s not a real rain, but Yusuke stays in the game they’re playing. “Do you see any sunlight here?”

Akira returns to settle between his knees again, in front of the counter. Takes his glasses back, the brush of his fingers against Yusuke’s still as exciting as if they’ve only been dating for a couple of months.

“You’re here, though,” Akira says as his argument.

Yusuke– lets out a kind of squeak and hides his face in his hands.

He’s not usually that easy to fluster – affection comes naturally to him, carries no shame with it, even if receiving it is generally more challenging than giving – but Akira is playing with dangerous imagery, right now.

“What?” Akira laughs. “You say much more outrageous things to me all the time, you know.”

“I– it’s– it’s you who are my light,” Yusuke tries to explain, still flushed.

“And you’re mine,” Akira says simply.

Yusuke peeks at him through his fingers– and notes, with fond amusement, how Akira’s eyes track the motion. A coiled, pounce-ready attention.

Yusuke indulges the impulse to tease him – moves his hands, just a little, as if about to reveal his face, and then hides behind them again as soon as Akira jerks forward in a quickly aborted motion. Repeats the same feint, again, until Akira growls light-heartedly at being played with, and Yusuke laughs and finally moves his hands out of the way for real, lets Akira steal the kiss he has been hunting.

“You’re my sunshower light,” Akira says, seriously. “Unforeseen and magical. Like the sun while it rains.”

“The fox’s wedding,” Yusuke recalls with a smile, and Akira falls quiet for a moment.

“Yeah,” he says, his hair still dripping wet from the sprinkler shower. “...About that.”

Yusuke’s heart speeds up before he even realizes, consciously, what’s happening.

Akira takes a step back from the counter, and gets down on one knee.

Goro behaves, at the wedding.

For a start, he shows up, which he considers an achievement already. Doesn’t make any pointed comments, once there. During the private ceremony, stands quietly among the other Phantom Thieves, next to Sojiro Sakura and the painting he’s awkwardly, carefully holding up.

Gives the happy couple his gift envelope and even manages to look both of them in the eye as he does.

Eats a couple bites at the banquet, even if he can’t really taste the food.

When Ann and Ryuji launch a pre-prepared trivia game on who knows the newlyweds better, Goro participates earnestly, and wins a mug.

Good wedding favor, he thinks. Will be satisfying to break later.

But for now, he behaves.

Doesn’t really look at Yusuke, because he has changed into a brightly colored kimono for the reception and looks too resplendent to look at directly. Watches Akira instead, out of some kind of masochistic appreciation of his happiness.

Because he’s watching Akira, he notices how his eyes keep flicking to the two empty seats at the back of the reception hall, how every time a shadow of pain flickers over his otherwise jubilant expression. And so Goro takes a walk around the room, and on his way leans over to Futaba and tells her, under his breath, “Tell your father to make a speech.”

Her mouth falls into an o-shape and then she nods rapidly and runs off to squabble with Sojiro, until she eventually convinces him to get up on the stage and say some things he probably wants to erase from everyone’s memories immediately. Akira stops glancing at the empty seats and instead looks like he’s about to cry, in a good way. And Goro comes back to his seat and drinks more sake.

Okay, he’s drinking too much, maybe. But– civilly. Responsibly. And not that much more than other guests, who have way less of an excuse.

Like Makoto, who crashes down into a seat next to Goro’s, rather obviously red-faced already.

“How,” she demands, “did you just walk away?”

Oh no. No-no-no Goro is not having that conversation.

“I don’t see,” he says through his teeth, “how that’s any of your business.”

“No, I need to know!” she almost-shouts, genuinely distressed. “You spent years on law school– so much effort– and you just– how?”

…Ah. That conversation.

“Makoto, I never cared about law in the first place,” he says, trying for gentle. “So it was easy for me. I don’t think my… experience can help you.”

She sniffles pitifully, and he tries his best to think of something helpful.

“...I examined my feelings about my future career, and found only contempt and exhaustion,” he recalls. Makoto sniffles again. “And then sought advice from someone I– someone I look up to.” He just did that inside his own mind, but still.

Makoto’s eyes widen and she starts looking around the room, frantically. Goro does not check who she’s searching for, just sighs and leans back in his chair. And drinks more sake.

The after-party is raucous. They move to a different location, and the guest list for this stage has expanded to include everyone the newlyweds know, which, in Akira’s case, seems to mean half of Tokyo. Goro ducks around some stranger’s overenthusiastic attempt to pull him into a chain dance and slinks out.

It’s nicer outside. Goro’s been getting dizzy, with the alcohol and social overload and the strain of behaving, but the cool air clears his mind, a little. He takes a turn into a side alley to catch a breath, to decide if he’s earned the right to just leave entirely by now– and runs into someone else in the same position.

Sumire startles when he intrudes on her hiding place, rushes to straighten up from her despondent slouch against the wall. He seems to have interrupted her own breather moment, a timeout to stand and stare at the sky with aching intensity. The shadows under her eyes are red-rimmed.

Still, she smiles at him brightly in greeting. “Goro-san!”

“Sumire,” he says, awkwardly. She considers him, for a few beats – whatever she sees in his face, it apparently qualifies him as suitable company.

“Goro-san,” she says, conspiratorially, “want to get out of here?”

Sumire clearly has a destination in mind, so Goro lets her drag him along, finally away from the celebrations and to a–

“Batting center?”

Goro raises an eyebrow in question, but takes his spot in the cage next to hers, separated only by the curtain of netting.

Sumire puts her hair up in a reverent gesture. “Dad used to take us, when we were kids,” she explains. “I’d always freeze up, actually… It was Akira-senpai who helped me get confident enough to enjoy these. I’m so grateful he did! It’s very nice to come here, every once in a while.”

She rolls her shoulders, warming up.

“When you just want to hit stuff,” she concludes, in a quieter, flatter voice.

Goro does want to hit stuff.

The pitching machines click to life, and for a long while neither Sumire nor Goro says anything else, focused on the challenge of batting. The silence fills with the sounds of balls swishing through the air, clicking against bats when they connect and tapping softly on the ground when they don’t.

“...I hate it,” Sumire says eventually. Swing. Miss.

“I hate it so much. I hate it! Am I not good enough? Won’t I ever be good enough!?” Swing. Hit.

“I put in effort! I try, I really try, I work so hard! And it doesn’t matter!” Swing. Hit. Swing, too early.

“It doesn’t matter how much you want it!” Swing. Miss. “How hard you try! It never matters!!” Swing. Hit.

“There will always be someone BETTER!” Swing. Hit. “Someone who deserves it more! Someone you can never–” Swing. Hit. “Ever–” Several rapid swings against air, not even trying to aim for the ball. “Catch up to!!” A ball flies right past her, and she screams at it.

“Argh!” Swing. Hit. “I HATE LOSING!” Swing. Hit. “I HATE IT!” Swing. Hit. “IT SHOULD–” Swing. Miss. “HAVE BEEN ME!!!”

–she throws her bat to the ground, and just stands in place, fists clenched. Sobbing, openly.

The balls swish past. Goro doesn’t go to comfort her, not yet. She needs, he can tell, to let it out, just like this. So instead he stays on his side of the divider and holds his bat steady, takes the last couple of swings before their time runs out. And lets his own stream of silent tears run its course.

“This is not,” Sumire says, unnecessarily, “about Akira-senpai.”

Goro hums in agreement. It’s pretty obvious what it is about, and he feels, in hindsight, bad for not finding time to see her one-on-one in the month or two since she’s been back. They have all been fussing around with congratulations, but someone should have been there for her properly. To hit stuff with.

“It’s just that… seeing them on the banquet hall stage, that felt too much like– like watching that fucking podium,” she hisses, her voice breaking again.

Goro shifts minutely closer, so their shoulders touch. They’re sitting right on the curb outside of the batting center, cradling vending machine drinks in their hands.

“I understand,” he says quietly, because he does. And because he’s sure that’s what she needs to hear, much more than yet another ‘Oh, but you got so far!’ or ‘There’s always next time!’

Sumire hiccups. There’s a bit of a feverish glint in her eyes, a bit of a flush high on her cheeks that suggests she may have also had a cup of sake too many. Goro takes her can of soda and cracks it open, pointedly, before handing it back.

“...You would understand, huh?” she mumbles as she takes a sip. Then, after a pause– “Did you know, I used to kind of resent you for that?”

Goro didn’t. “...For understanding?”

“No. For… everything with you and Yusuke-senpai.”

Oh. “Why?” Goro asks, curious to know even as the topic squeezes his heart with a length of barbed wire.

“It’s silly,” she says, abashed. “But… for a while there, we were in the same boat, you know? On the road trip, and for a bit after. What with– with not quite fitting in with the rest of the group, yet, and also with…” she gestures vaguely with her drink. “Following those two around. Like puppies.”

Goro feels the tips of his ears burn. He didn’t realize it was as obvious on him as it was on Sumire, back in the day.

“And then– oh, I was over Akira-senpai by then, mostly. Was trying to date around and all, remember?”

Goro kind of remembers, from ambient group gossip, but not because Sumire ever told him. They’ve never really talked about each other’s love lives, he realizes now. He should have noticed earlier. Guessed why.

“But still– why do you get to get invited...!” she says, with a residual kind of heat. “Why was it suddenly an option for you...! And, and then you just– just, just fumbled it anyway!”

Goro winces. Tightens his hold on his latte can.

“That made me so angry,” Sumire finishes explaining. “That you had a chance, and then just– let it go. It felt so unfair.”

She stops talking. Goro doesn’t really know what to say in response, so instead, he simply lifts an arm in an awkward invitation, and Sumire tucks herself under it.

“I get it now, though,” she says softly. “Why you kept leaving them. Judging you for that– I was no better than everyone who tells me, now,” she pitches her voice higher, “‘It’s so cool that you qualified!’– Or, ‘Wow, I know someone who went to the Olympics!’– Or, even, ‘You must be so proud of yourself!’”

She squeezes her drink, empty by now. Dents the can.

“Don’t they see? Do none of them see? Even if it’s wonderful to perform on that stage, even if it’s what I’ve been dreaming about for years– none of that matters. Not when–” she cuts herself off. Sniffles, and takes a deep, shaky breath.

“...What’s the point of being there,” she summarizes, her voice hollow. “If you’re not the one on the podium.”

Goro holds her tighter. She lowers her head, leans her cheek against his shoulder. Stays quiet, now, having said all she had to say.

He thinks about her words. Thinks about the feelings in them, so resonant and familiar. Thinks about how she must have felt, smiling for the cameras and, later, for her parents, friends, acquaintances.

Can’t help but also think about her routine, anyway.

They watched the gymnastics event all together, on Leblanc’s tiny TV, cheered and gasped for Sumire and booed at the judges. And then Goro also watched it by himself, later, looked it up online and played Sumire’s performance over and over.

He understands, logically, why she didn’t place. Sees the brief flashes of stiffness in her otherwise smooth motions, winces at a badly landed roll. But–

Goro is not like Yusuke, easily touched or consoled by art, except for the moments when he is. And Sumire’s lovingly choreographed performance, the elegiac determination in her every breath on the mat…

He knows she doesn’t want any more platitudes, but the thought rolls from his tongue anyway, the sentiment too strong to contain.

“For what it’s worth,” Goro says. His voice feels hoarse. “I loved your routine. It… it made me want to live.”

Contrary to his expectations, Sumire doesn’t scoff or roll her eyes. Instead, she looks up at him, from her awkward position on his shoulder, and asks, in a small, struck voice, “Really?”

Goro nods, a tight and sincere motion. “You looked so lonely,” he says, trying his best to explain. “So lonely and so– joyful, still.” One half of a duet, danced in honor of the dead. Lived in honor of the dead, as though that’s an option. “As if it was painful to move, but you loved it anyway. As if you loved yourself, and wanted to live. Even when it hurts.”

She hides her face in his suit jacket.

“I’m glad,” she says, tremulously. “That’s– that’s what I was trying to say. I’m glad, I’m so glad someone heard it.”

He touches her hand, carefully, and she latches onto his, holding it like a lifeline.

“...Maybe it’s worth it, then,” she says faintly, still muffled. “Maybe it’s all worth it.”

It’s quiet for a long time. Sumire’s hold on his hand relaxes, but she doesn’t move from the half-embrace, doesn’t lift her cheek from his shoulder.

After a while, Goro grows concerned. Is this okay? Is she crying again, or something…? He cranes his neck, a little, to check on her expression.

Sumire… has her eyes closed, and breathes softly through half-parted lips. Fast asleep.

“...Alright,” Goro huffs, and reaches for his phone. “Let’s get you a taxi.”

Goro actually gets into the car with her, makes sure she gets home safe. Walks her to the door of her house.

“Do you, um, want to crash on the couch?” she offers generously, despite her sluggish exhaustion. “M’parents won’t mind.”

Goro shakes his head. “No, no need. I’m not drunk enough to be unable to get home.”

“Alright,” she says, in the soft and dull voice of someone who can, at the moment, only think about how badly they need to lie down.

Goro leaves her to it. Stands on the corner of her street, for a while, and does his best to not look directly at the thoughts of podiums, or losses, or things that make it all worth it.

He really is not drunk enough. Not nearly enough.

Goro pulls up his maps app, filters by ‘open now’, and sets out to fix that.

‘Great news, everyone,’ reads the part of the message Goro can see on his generic-wallpaper lock screen, ‘we finally went through the honeymoon pictur–’

This is just in the group chat, not a personal message, but his heart still treacherously skipped a beat at seeing Yusuke’s contact– what if it’s about– it’s not. Goro puts his phone back in his pocket before his distraction is noticed.

“–you have everything on track, then. Great job, Akechi-kun!”

The girl from the academic affairs office hums over his file, evidently finding it unobjectionable.

“Have you thought about career options yet?” she asks, in conclusion of the meeting.

“Probably something municipal,” Goro half-shrugs. He’s been getting by with part-times at the city hall – low-level data entry positions, but the hours are flexible, and it gives him a chance to get a feel for the internal workings. The plan is to start job searching in earnest after graduation.

“I see! Here, you should look through these also,” she hands him a stack of pamphlets, clearly a standard offering. “That’s all organizations our alumni work for, internships that match the focus of our programs, that kind of thing.”

Goro flips idly through the stack. Some of these seem intriguing, at first glance. Wouldn’t hurt to apply to, probably.

“This one’s in America,” he notes, surprised. The counselor lifts herself off her seat a little to get a look.

“Oh! That’s a very competitive position, but– I’m sure you could get in, actually. I’ve heard your presentations, they’re always looking for people with that kind of tenacity. Although I understand, of course, that relocation may be a deal-breaker–”

Goro’s phone vibrates, and he peeks at it, compulsively, to check the notification. It’s just the group chat again.

“My apologies,” he says, returning his focus to the consultation.

“No problem, we were pretty much done anyway. Think about your options, alright?”

Goro shuffles the pamphlets stack.

Shuffles it again, until the America internship is at the top.

“…Thank you,” he says, slowly.

“I will.”

Chapter Text

When Goro pulls on the sleeve of his yukata, Yusuke follows him behind the festival stands with no question. The sounds seem muffled here, and the bright colors muted; the change in lighting and background brings attention to the lotus blossoms on Goro’s yukata, highlights them with ominous emphasis.

“Uh, I wanted to tell you first,” Goro says. “I just passed the last round of interviews, and got an internship position. A really good one.”

“...Congratulations,” Yusuke says carefully. He can’t muster proper excitement on Goro’s behalf, not when Goro’s body language screams ‘there’s a catch’ – gaze downturned, hand clutching onto the opposite elbow with a bruising grip.

“Thank you,” Goro says, strained. “...But, you should know it’s. It’s, um.

“It’s in America.”

Yusuke’s breath catches in his throat.

“...Internship,” is what he grasps onto, when he manages to speak. “Internship – then, does that imply it’s temporary?”

“For now,” Goro says, still avoiding his eye. “But a permanent position is available, potentially. If I do well.”

Yusuke has no doubt Goro will do great, if he applies himself. Which– he will, probably. If he wants to– wants– if he wants to leave as badly as to be looking into internships in America.

“We can still text,” Goro says, unhelpfully. “Video call. I’ll visit. Ann is out of the country half the year, and everyone’s still best friends with her.”

“...Can I do anything,” Yusuke says, instead of acknowledging any of that. “Can I do anything to convince you to stay?”

He doesn’t care if he sounds desperate. He doesn’t care if– no, he does care if Goro really, seriously wants that job. He’ll back off, in that case.

It would still hurt.

Goro’s eyes snap to him with a kind of wounded intensity.

“Don’t offer that,” he says, sharply. “You know you would not do anything.”

Yusuke feels like he would, at this moment. He reaches his hand out. “I–”

“Would you choose me, then?” Goro spits out.

“I have been –”

“Would you choose only me? Would you leave your– your goddamn husband to be with me, exclusively?”

Yusuke’s hand falls back to his side.

“...No,” he whispers, dropping his gaze to the ground.

“Uh-huh,” Goro doesn’t sound a smidge surprised, or even offended.

“...Tell me,” he says, after a moment. “Back in the beginning, for… Goro and Yusuke, attempt no. 1,” his tone turns sardonic for a second. “If Akira hadn’t agreed to the… arrangement we had, in the end. If that were never an option. If you had to choose. Would you have chosen me? At any point, could you have chosen me?”

Yusuke bites his lip, helplessly. His hands move, without conscious intention, to latch his own pinkie fingers together.

Goro sucks in a sharp breath, apparently taking that as enough of an answer.

“Why?” he says, plaintive. “Because he was there first? It can’t be as simple as that.”

Why, indeed? Yusuke doesn’t think he could rank the affection he feels for the two of them, determine a clear winner. But he can’t deny that Goro’s questions have shone a spotlight on an asymmetry.

“...I think,” Yusuke says, haltingly, testing the give of his logic with careful steps, “the reason is… that there is… more, to a relationship, than being in love with each other.”

Goro makes a small sound, and Yusuke realizes, belatedly, that this may have been harsh.

“...I understand,” Goro says, defeated. “No, I– I understand, really. That’s always been the problem – I am not capable of more.”

It doesn’t escape Yusuke’s notice that neither of them has denied the ‘being in love’ part. His heart aches.

“Goro–”

“No, don’t you see? You’re right. You and Akira – you know how to build a life with each other. You’re– you’re brave enough to, diligent enough to. I’ve always been… more of a complication.”

He takes a steadying breath. Looks Yusuke in the eye for his next words.

“And that is why I need to– learn to detach myself from you. Why we need to learn to move on. Why the distance will be better, for everyone.”

Yusuke doesn’t know if he agrees, but it dawns on him with painful certainty that there truly is nothing he can say to change the outcome. The decision is made, has been made; Goro didn’t start this conversation hoping to be convinced.

This is not, yet, a goodbye. Goro isn’t leaving tonight, presumably. And he’s right that he can visit, and call, and remain in Yusuke’s life.

But still, they stand and look at each other as if for the last time.

Above them, the silence crackles into the booming spectacle of fireworks.

The move is… alright, actually. Not nearly as lonely as, Goro can admit to himself now, he feared.

He had gotten so complacent, so dependent on the safety net he’d been woven into in Tokyo that leaving it behind came with real trepidation. He doesn’t remember how he ever used to function as a deserted island, without the reassuring warmth of a multitude of connections at his back– or rather, he remembers it too well. The thought of falling back into living like that, falling and falling without anyone to catch him, is terrifying.

But it’s alright, in the end. Work keeps him busy. It’s not as… personal as he’d like, more focused on logistics and strategies, but it’s a heady feeling, working on real problems. Being taken seriously, on the team.

He makes an effort to talk to people. Goes out with his coworkers on Friday nights. Brings coffee for everyone to early meetings– not very good coffee, but no one here knows to have Leblanc standards.

And, to his unspeakable relief– the safety net stretches out, and doesn’t snap, despite the distance.

The time difference makes Futaba easier to talk to, if anything; synchronizes him with her awful sleep schedule.

Akira sends him pictures of new cocktails he’s developing and asks for help with naming them. Sends, later, a photo of the menu with Goro’s suggestions printed out.

Sumire mails him a lucky charm, and he keeps it attached to the handle of his briefcase.

Yusuke…

Yusuke texts him walls, screens of messages about the most disjointed topics, every day.

Goro takes pictures of every foreign detail, every surprising American peculiarity, and sends them to be used as inspiration. Thinks, with a fluttery feeling, how he’d never even notice most of these if not for the habit to try and look at the world through Yusuke’s eyes, as if he were here with him.

He assembles a collection of local snacks from different grocery stores and sends a package back to Tokyo. Yusuke writes up detailed reviews, and Goro lies about a cat video when a coworker asks what he’s smiling about.

One time, Yusuke calls him in what would be the middle of the night in Tokyo. Says, hushed, that he longed to hear his voice, and so Goro sits with him and talks about random thoughts on his mind, talks until the other side of the call goes sleep-quiet.

That’s just the one time. But it keeps Goro warm for months.

On the screen, Yusuke leans back into Akira’s embrace on their couch and gestures animatedly, in the middle of a spiel on the ritual significance of specific pigments in various ancient cultures, a topic that has nothing at all to do with the original conversation.

I want, Goro thinks with sudden piercing clarity, to be there with them. The thought is so loud it startles his own self.

Yusuke accidentally bonks Akira on the nose and tips his head back for an apology kiss, and then goes right back to explaining Maya blue.

...No you don’t, Goro corrects himself. You have no place there.

Akira absent-mindedly rubs his face on Yusuke’s cheek, like a cat. Catches Yusuke’s hand mid-gesture and intertwines their fingers; the rings catch the light.

See, Goro thinks at himself, reproachfully. You don’t.

Even then, he’s not sure it’s entirely convincing.

[Akira: guess what]

[Akira: didnt want to jinx it before but]

[Akira: <image>]

[Akira: we’re moving to a new apt ✧right above tenki-ame✧]

That is not what it’s called, but Tenki-ame, ‘sunshower’, is some kind of inside-joke name for the little restaurant slash bar Akira has all but taken over, these days. Goro’s pretty sure it’s a matter of time before he buys it out, and changes the sign to that.

The picture is of two pairs of keys, held up to the camera triumphantly. Yusuke’s still has the old, irrelevant couple keychain on it.

[Congratulations :)]

[How is the new place?]

[Akira: great fr]

[Akira: yusuke’s like elated about the natural light]

[Akira: giant windows]

Goro smiles at his phone. If Yusuke’s happy about the move, he is too. He firmly squishes the hint of a ridiculous, bittersweet sense of loss that accompanies the secondhand happiness – that feeling makes no sense. Even if he did spend a lot of time at Akira and Yusuke’s old apartment, at one point, he was never really part of that household, very much by design. Whatever memories get abandoned in the chaos of moving house, they’re better off that way.

[I’m happy for you both]

[Akira: thx]

[Akira: it’s so spacious too]

[Akira: really tbh almost too much space for the two of us]

[Akira: could make a whole second bedroom out of the studio]

[Akira: or like, fit a really huge bed]

[Akira: in the current bedroom]

Goro pinches the bridge of his nose with two fingers. He really hopes Akira doesn’t actually believe he’s being subtle.

He considers playing along, rubbing salt in the wound with this by-proxy flirting. Saying something like– ‘Does it have space for a wall-length bookshelf, too? I’ve always wanted one.’ Or, instead, shutting this down properly. Telling Akira it’s obvious what he’s doing, and to cut it out.

In the end, he just goes with,

[I’ll get someone to tell Morgana you said ‘the two of us’]

Akira’s response is immediate and panicked, just as planned.

[Akira: * TWO OF US PLUS CAT]

[Akira: *** THREE OF US]

[Akira: mona don’t listen to him I love you–]

Ann jumps up and down when she sees him – she’s been excited they get to fly back to Japan together ever since they found the overlap in their schedules, his vacation and her conveniently local fashion show. Right after the reunion hug, she launches into a stream of suggestions for what they can do while she’s here, before they leave – he’s instructed to attend her event, and to show her around, and–

“And we need to give you a makeover for your return! Like, what are you wearing?!”

“A sweater,” Goro says, affronted. It’s a nice one, too. High-quality.

“Frumpy,” Ann declares.

“It’s classy, you floozy–”

“Frum. Py.” She grabs his shoulders and turns him this and that way a little, appraising. “Well, it’s fine for here. But back home – you’re showing up after almost a year abroad! You need to come in sparkling and irresistible, you know! Sweep him off his feet!”

Goro swallows past a lump in his throat.

“Ann, he’s married,” he reminds her, electing to skip pretending he doesn’t know who she’s talking about.

“Doesn’t seem to be a problem for anyone but you,” Ann pouts pointedly, but drops it. For now.

“No, seriously, what are you doing?” she asks again later, while they’re picking at their shared tray of fast food at the mall food court. What was supposed to be Goro’s tray of fast food, but Ann seems to definitively prefer it to her own low-cal smoothie bowl. “Everyone knows you two should get back together.”

“Ann,” Goro sighs pleadingly. “We were a disaster.”

“Sometimes,” she shrugs. “But you were working it out fine, eventually. You pretty much got a handle on, what was it, compression?”

“Compersion,” Goro corrects reluctantly. He did do his research, back in the day.

Ann jabs a french fry in his direction. “So what is the issue? Did you freak out ‘cause it got too real?”

Goro squirms, uncomfortable at how close to the truth that is.

“...It was simply too unnecessarily complicated,” he states. “It’s better to leave that… experiment in the past. And besides, I live half the globe away, now.”

“Oh, please,” she waves her hand dismissively. “On a temporary internship. Just ‘cause you ran here doesn’t mean you can’t run back.”

“I,” Goro says, trying to convey how much he wants this conversation to be finally over with his tone, “have no plans to move back to Japan. Can we talk about something else?”

“Hmm,” she says in a sing-song voice. “I do have another topic, but I was waiting for you to notice, detective.” She takes a long sip of her drink, making a loud noise through the straw, and drums the fingers of her other hand on the table. The gesture draws his eye, brings attention to her immaculate manicure and to–

Wait. That’s new.

“Wait, when did this happen?” Goro shifts forward to examine her hand, the engagement ring sparkling on her finger. “Ann! Who proposed? Where, what was it like? How did I miss you were wearing this?”

“Slipping, aren’t you?” Ann teases, and admires the ring herself, a happy flush on her face.

“Okay, so what happened–”

Goro clicks back into the easy, well-oiled group dynamic as smoothly as if he never left.

They throw a party for him, just like the usual parties back at Leblanc, only at Tenki-ame, this time. He tries all the cocktails he’s named, compliments Akira sincerely on his skill – they’re really very good. Catches up with everyone. Tries to follow Futaba’s explanation of her research and loses track at about the ten minute mark. Gets into an inane argument with Ryuji, one that has them both grinning in exhilaration by the end of it.

Throughout it all, like a heartbeat, there is Yusuke’s full attention on him. Goro tries not to notice, the way he maneuvers around everyone to stand closer, the way he listens intently whenever Goro pipes up to share some insignificant anecdote from his life abroad. The way he keeps looking at him like he never wants to look away.

Tries not to notice how insistently his own attention drifts to him in return. Or how he’s wearing the shirt Ann picked out for him, a deep burgundy one that brings out his eyes.

It doesn’t matter, anyway, none of it. Goro will be leaving again soon enough.

“Honey, I know you’re in there.”

Akira raps his knuckles on the closed bedroom door.

“Don’t come in,” Yusuke says, muffled, from behind it. “I’m being pathetic.”

Akira cracks the door open anyway, and finds Yusuke curled up on the bed, clutching… what he recognizes as a T-shirt Goro forgot at their place at some point, years ago.

Akira climbs into the bed too. Extends an arm for Yusuke to snuggle under, T-shirt squished between them.

“I know,” he says quietly, petting his husband’s hair. “I’ll miss him too.”

Yusuke sniffles, and Akira realizes he’s full on crying – has been, for a while now, resigned and inconsolable.

“I can’t stand this,” he whispers into Akira’s shoulder. “Why does he always have to leave?”

Akira hums in understanding.

“I had thought– I had thought I was used to his absence, could accept it, but having him back for this brief moment–” his voice breaks off into another sob. Akira holds him closer.

“...I don’t mean to seem ungrateful for all that I do have,” Yusuke hurries to add, as if Akira’s kindness has stirred up a sudden guilty anxiety. “By all accounts, you are more than I could ever wish for, and yet–”

“Shh.” Akira finds his hand and hooks their pinkies together, as natural as breathing. “I get it. Don’t worry.”

Morgana pads in silently and joins them, cuddles up to Yusuke’s other side. Akira scritches his ear in between reassuring, steady strokes over Yusuke’s shoulder.

“I’m so greedy,” Yusuke says, quietly abashed. “But– I can’t stand this.”

Akira listens to the sound of rain pattering against their window and lets him cry it out. Once, long ago, he would have felt a conflicted sense of vindication about this, about being the one to hold Yusuke at the end of the day.

By now, it only makes his own heart twist, a clean sympathetic pain without caveats. He can barely stand this himself.

He tries to think of words of consolation, hesitating on whether to allow for any further hope, when the doorbell rings. Once, twice– a long, continuous third ring. Frantic.

Yusuke looks at him, wide eyed. Akira shakes his head – no, he’s not expecting anyone.

Just as the fourth ring starts, Yusuke shoots up from the bed, almost stumbles over his feet in his hurry to get to the door. Akira shares a raised-eyebrow glance with Morgana – Morgana makes his face look like he’s raising an eyebrow somehow, anyway – and they clamber out of bed as well, and follow.

Goro stands in the doorway, out of breath and drenched with rainwater like a wet rat. His hair is sticking to his face in soaked icicles, but he doesn’t seem to notice.

“Yusuke– both of you–”

Chapter Text

Goro stands in the doorway, out of breath and drenched with rainwater like a wet rat. His hair is sticking to his face in soaked icicles, but he doesn’t seem to notice.

“Yusuke– both of you– would you take me back– would you please take me back,” he says in a rush, shaking with cold or emotion, or both. “I swear, I promise I’ll stay for good this time, I’ll make it work, I’ll do anything to make it work–” this sounds entirely unrehearsed, unmodulated, just a raw and desperate stream of begging. The hand on the handle of his suitcase is white-knuckled. “I tried to leave, I was at the gate, but I– I can’t stand it–”

…Yusuke grabs onto the wet lapels of his coat and drags him into a kiss, so hard they both stumble further into the hallway and then down to the ground. Goro’s suitcase falls over with a crash.

Akira steps around them carefully, smiling to himself. Reaches over for the suitcase and then for the door, pulls it closed.

It takes a little while for the two of them to break apart. After they do, Goro keeps gasping on every inhale, struggling to collect himself, still on the floor. He reaches over and touches Yusuke’s face, reverent– then pauses.

“Are you– have you been crying?” he breathes out, stricken with worry. “Is– is something wrong, did something happen?”

Yusuke hiccups in distraught amusement.

Akira ducks into the bathroom and comes back with a hand towel, puts it on top of Goro’s wet hair. “We were going to miss you,” he says, by way of explanation.

Goro’s eyes snap up to him, then back to Yusuke’s tear-flushed face. He moves his hand hesitantly, points at his own nose, as if asking, ‘Me…?’

“Is he stupid?” Morgana says to no one in particular, flicking his tail. “Like, is he an idiot?”

Akira scrunkles Goro’s hair with the towel and then steps back, out of the crash zone, as Yusuke dives back into another tackle of a kiss.

This is far from the first time when all three of them, to say nothing of the cat, share space and affection, but it feels like a fresh start. Feels more solid, more real this time. Feels, this time, like the first night of the rest of their lives.

Goro takes a steaming hot shower and wears one of Akira’s shirts afterwards – Yusuke presses his nose into his shoulder with a kind of fascinated interest. They cook dinner all together, crowding the kitchen, and Goro smashes garlic cloves with the flat of a knife so that the peel comes off more easily. Morgana weaves an eight-figure around his legs, acknowledging him as part of the family.

Yusuke kisses him many more times over the rest of the evening. His hair is growing longer, these days, and he tied it back for cooking earlier – Goro’s fingers find the hair tie and undo it, in the middle of one of the kisses. The gesture feels familiar, somehow.

Akira tries to scamper out to the couch when they go to bed, but Goro stops him with a hand on the hem of his shirt.

“Stay,” he says hoarsely.

“I thought you’d want some time alone with him,” Akira says, quietly understanding. Goro shakes his head.

“Stay,” he says again.

And so they all pile into the bed together, Yusuke in the middle. Akira falls asleep first – or at least pretends to, Goro doesn’t trust him like that, not since he stumbled out of the bedroom with played-up grogginess after the handbook incident – but Goro and Yusuke just lie on their sides, staring at each other. Finally allowed to do that openly.

“I promise I’ll be– more,” Goro whispers fervently. “I’ll learn. I’ll let Akira teach me, if I have to. I’ll make us make sense.”

Yusuke reaches out and splays his fingers over Goro’s chest.

“We’ve always made sense,” he murmurs. “To me, we’ve always made sense. I only need you to let me convince you of that.”

Goro closes his eyes, melting into the moment for a breath.

“...Then I will. Listen to you, believe you. I won’t break your heart again,” he promises softly. “I’ll be careful with it. I won’t make you cry, anymore.”

Yusuke doesn’t answer immediately. His hand moves down Goro’s chest, along his side, sliding against his skin with a sudden frisson of suggestion.

“Perhaps,” he says, velvety-low, “you should make me cry in a pleasant way, now that you’re back.” Goro’s breath hitches.

Akira’s head pops up over Yusuke’s shoulder, from his big spoon position. “M-m?” he purrs – perfectly awake, Goro called it – “Can I watch?”

From his side of the bed, Morgana makes an annoyed sound and jumps off, taking his cue to slink out of the room.

When they finally fall asleep, spent and happy, limbs tangled up with each other– their breathing harmonizes into a soft symphony. Interwoven, parts of the same whole.

Goro feels warm.

[Oracle: WHAT]

[Oracle: this is so cheesy]

[Oracle: are we in a c-tier romance movie what is happening]

[Oracle: who actually gets off their flight]

[Oracle: for a dramatic get-back-together]

[Panther: ur just sulking cause u owe me now~~]

[Oracle: WHATEVER]

[Oracle: howww did u guess the day]

[Oracle: broken luck stat]

[Violet: Maybe you’ll win next time, Futaba-chan]

[Panther: i don’t know]

[Panther: i have a feeling]

[Panther: this was seriously the last time we could bet on this]

[Skull: for real?]

[Noir: Yes, Mona-chan said the same]

[Queen: That would honestly be for the best.]

[Panther: yeah]

[Panther: so]

[Panther: \⁠(⁠๑^⁠◡^⁠๑⁠)⁠ﾉ⁠♬]

[Panther: I WIN EVERYTHING FOREVER]