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The gun is heavy in Goro’s hand. Its muzzle presses against Ren’s forehead like a kiss. The boy’s expression is dazed but their eyes still widen in surprise, mouth open and silent. It’s so easy, so horribly easy to pull the trigger. A muffled ringing in his ears. The crack of a skull against a metal table. Blood instead of Metaverse tar. A cooling body instead of a disintegrating Shadow.
Ren’s corpse twitches.
Goro’s legs refuse to budge. He can only stand and watch as Ren sits up, movements stiff and jerky. The hole in their head is still bleeding.
“Hey honey,” they say. Their cracked lips split into a smile that is far too gentle. “Great aim.”
Fear shoots up his spine like ice. If he fails here— Shido will— His plan— Is this bastard so perfect that even death wanted to grace them with an exception? Goro aims the gun at them again.
“All you’re good for, huh?” Ren mimics a gun of their own with two fingers and laughs. “I’ll come to my senses eventually.”
Goro pulls the trigger a second time—
And wakes up with a gasp strangled in his throat. A warm hand settles on the center of his chest.
“You’re okay, everything is okay.” Ren’s voice is soft, low with drowsiness. “Deep breath in through your nose, out through your mouth.”
His brain latches onto the simple command which finally gets his body moving to obey. His shoulders shake through each count but eventually Ren guides his breathing to something steady, even through his rapid heart. The hand stays on his chest. He wraps his own hand around it, grips it tight. What a fucking joke, the devil inside his head sneers, holding hands with your victim. He can feel Ren staring at him. He doesn’t dare glance over. There’s something about those eyes that seem to peer straight through him. If he falls into them, he’ll talk far too much like he always does, too eager to purge the discomfort of being studied too closely. Instead, he trains his gaze at the ceiling. His mouth opens, closes, opens again and settles on a pathetic “sorry.”
Ren shifts closer to rest a head on his shoulder. “What do you have to be sorry for?”
It’s the world’s stupidest question. What doesn’t he have to be sorry for? He’s even sorry for not being sorry half the time, for crushing any rising regret under his heel and—
I tried to kill you, it felt good even if just for a moment, I pulled you down from the altar and the decision was mine, mine mine mine mine MINE, no one can take that away—
Goro wants to cackle hysterically or to stab himself or set fire to someone else, but all of those responses would probably alarm Ren. “Waking you up,” he finally says. It’s a pathetic response. He knows it’s not enough to satisfy Ren, can feel their gaze grow sharper. They must be calculating if it’s worth risking an argument at this hour to point out.
Eventually, Ren sighs and lets it go, nuzzles even closer to him. “Don’t be. I don’t mind.”
Goro both adores and is infuriated with that seemingly endless well of patience. It can’t last forever; even Ren, possible saint with a savior complex, has their limits. Goro has always been successful in crossing limits. With foster families. Peers. His mother. He’s bound to hit Ren’s at some point. Any day now, really. And if (when) they leave, Goro will laugh and say he always expected it. And it won’t hurt because he knows, always knew that no one wanted him. A cursed, ungrateful, heinous little thing. It’s just a matter of time until Ren’s realization.
But. But! If (when) Ren leaves him, Goro doesn’t know what he’d do. He’s always been too selfish and greedy and covetous. He might kill Ren for it. He might kill Ren right now, for having this much power over him.
A kiss to his temple interrupts the spiral. “You’re overthinking again,” Ren points out.
“The brain is an organ that thinks,” Goro snaps. “You should try using it sometime.”
Undeterred, Ren presses another kiss to his head. “Hm. Sounds too hard.”
“I’m leaving,” he suddenly says. Something almost clicks, clarity teetering at the edge of his grasp.
“To go where?”
“You.”
Ren lifts their head up. Goro still doesn’t meet their gaze.
“You’re joking.”
Goro stays silent.
It’s a long time before they jerk up more, leaning on an elbow. “You’re— Are you being serious?” They’re unable to keep the anxiety out of their voice. Goro drinks the sound of it, lets it burn hot and shameful in his gut.
Ren’s face is hovering in his field of vision now. No glasses to hide behind. Sweat at their forehead and trembling lips. Disbelief. Panic. Hurt.
There it is. Goro almost smiles.
“I don’t get it. What did I— Why?” They run a hand through messy curls. “I thought we were doing good-“
“I just wanted to see that look on your face,” Goro admits.
Confusion slowly twists into anger and Ren shoves him to the side to move and sit at the edge of the bed. “You’re such a fucking asshole.”
Goro sits up too. “Oh? Did you just come to that obvious conclusion?”
“No, you’re always an asshole but holy shit, Akechi…” They rub a hand hard down their face. “That was so fucking mean.”
“As mean as this?” Goro crawls over to where they’re sitting, close enough to extend two fingers and tap them against Ren’s temple.
Ren’s eyes narrow. They grab Goro’s wrist. Goro lets them. “Is that what this is about?”
Yes. No. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“You were having a nightmare about it.”
Well, yeah, that was an easy deduction. “Congrats,” Goro says flatly. “Were you expecting a grand prize?”
Ren’s hand moves to push up glasses that aren’t there, then cards roughly through their hair instead. Tension lines their shoulders. “I just wanna know why you’re being a dick right now.”
“I’m always like this.”
“Not always.”
Goro doesn’t respond. An uneasy silence falls between them. Whatever satisfaction that had built up before has solidified into a stone that sits heavy in his chest. Guilt has been a long-time companion of his, though it makes unwanted visits more often these days. It doesn’t make him hate the feeling less. He gets up to go to the bathroom to wash his face, maybe make some tea, but Ren catches his hand so quickly that he nearly stumbles back onto the bed.
Ren bites at their lip, anxiety creeping into the edges of their expression. “Are you actually leaving?” All puppy-eyed and pathetic. Goro hates the way his heart stutters at the sight.
“What would you do,” he asks, “if I did? Right now?”
Ren glances to the side the way they do when they try to calculate the answer that would please their conversational partner the most. It is so much easier to catch it without those ugly frames in the way. Goro digs his nails into the back of their hand.
“Don’t tell me what you think I want to hear,” he demands as they wince. “Tell me what you would do.”
They squeeze their eyes shut. Their hold on his hand has already loosened. It’s Goro who’s gripping at their fingers tight.
“I’d let you go.” Their voice comes out small, shaky.
His knee-jerk reaction almost takes over, snarling internally at the idea that Ren would ever have him, own him enough to ‘let’ Goro do anything. But he knows the other well enough to understand what they mean. That they’d watch him walk away without a protest, just like they had done only a year ago on that cursed February night. He’s… not sure how he feels about their answer. Isn’t even sure what it was he wanted to hear in the first place.
“You’d do that? No begging? No trying to change my mind?”
They open their eyes, though they don’t quite look at him all the way. “If I tried to stop you, you’d never come back out of spite.”
Anger lights up his chest like a flash fire. “Oh? You’re assuming I’ll come crawling back at some point?” Of course. They’re used to being admired and adored when half of the city flocks to them like sweet little lambs.
“I’m not assuming anything!” Ren says, full of frustration. “I’m just hoping, since you came back after- after everything…”
“I could leave the country tomorrow.” Poison coats his every word, every cell. He can feel it taint Ren as the other pulls him close to wrap their arms around his waist. They nuzzle their face into his stomach. He’s torn between gripping their hair to yank them back and pulling their face close to his.
“I’d miss you.”
“You have a whole array of people you could pick from,” he says, mocking. It burns him up to think of it, all the undeserving fools out there soaking up even an ounce of Ren’s time. But in the end, he’s the most undeserving of them all.
Ren shakes their head. “I’d wait for you.”
“Even if I were gone for weeks? Months?”
“Yes.” No hesitation.
“Years?”
“I’d still wait for you.”
The fantasy comes to his mind so vividly. Ren holding onto his tattered glove, collecting the pieces left of him that they can hold onto. A forgotten tie. An unfinished novel. Poor substitutions, but they have to make do. Them tied to a singular anchor while the world spins around them in its apathetic, slow revolution. And Goro wouldn’t have to do a thing. They’d catch his familiar scent on someone else, or turn at the sight of every auburn head they saw, and Goro wouldn’t have to lift a finger to have their mind filled with just him, him, him. He feels a little dizzy at the thought.
“That’s fucking pathetic,” he says.
“I know.” They press his hands to their cheeks. “I don’t care.”
They don’t care. They don’t care that he saw their gray matter splattered across a metal table and felt the highest satisfaction, even if it was just for a few seconds. They don’t care that they’ve given him a knife to carve out their heart if he decides to. It’s terrifying. Why do they keep giving him the tools to destroy them?
“You should care.”
“I’m a natural rebel.”
Ugh. “I tried to kill you twice. I could do it again.”
“I trust you.”
“A mistake that many people make. You should know that better than anyone.”
“Then prove it.” They pull back, eyes gleaming with a challenge. “I’ll lay here and you can do whatever you want with me. And I won’t do anything back.” Like a cat, Ren rolls to their back on the bed, gazing up at Goro with a warmth that feels far too generous for 3 AM.
This is fucking stupid. He climbs into the bed and hovers over Ren anyway. It’s practically muscle memory at this point, especially when they look so inviting under him.
He touches the soft skin of their belly, the vulnerable layer encasing a world of organs that Goro can easily locate. Liver. Stomach. Intestines. Drags a blunt nail right down the middle, imagines himself splitting Ren in half, unfurling the layers to peer at the treasure within. A feast for the crows.
His hand moves to Ren’s chest, flat where Goro’s isn’t. Another source of envy. But punch through the skin, crack open the ribcage, and cradled between a set of lungs is the precious thing that belongs to him. He could tear it out and eat it.
His fingers graze their clavicle, then their neck. His hands circle around their throat. They swallow. He feels the motion underneath his thumbs. They don’t look scared. Their gaze is so fond. Goro flexes his fingers, squeezes them and they just close their eyes despite the stuttering of their chest. He really could snuff the light out of them right now and disappear into the night. He would own their last breath, steal the final remnants of their warmth, and no one else would be able to have them then.
He lets go.
Ren opens their eyes to look up at him. Their lips curl into a smile and start to move—
“Don’t,” he hisses.
They obediently shut up.
He pushes them to the side to make space and worms himself back under the covers. They press themself against his back, arm hovering over his side.
“Is this o-“
“It’s fine.”
He can feel them hesitate, but eventually their arm drapes gently over him. Their hair tickles the back of his neck. “I’ll make blueberry pancakes in the morning,” Ren says, because ‘I love you’ is still too much for Goro to hear.
“Thank you,” Goro responds, because ‘I love you too’ is still too much for him to say.
They cling to him then, bury their face in his neck and tangle their legs together. All that earlier talk of letting him go and yet…
When the morning sunlight streams through the windows, he lets himself stay in their hold.