Archive of Our Own ^beta

He never thinks he’ll make it to June.

There’s something peculiar about the birth of the summer’s heat; a newly blossomed sensation of freedom that youth nurtures so carefully. It is an end, and yet a beginning all the same — and yet that sensation feels different each time it comes. A newly decorated trinket, yet the same old, rusting iron cage. There’s weeds growing through the keyhole, and white-petaled flowers remind him of the bittersweet beauty. His birth has only further cemented this rusting bird-cage, and every year the flora only grows.

He’s extracted the meaning of this cage over the years; a recurring dream, under varying colorations of skies. It is not frequent, but it is notable enough to be remembered — how this figmented apparition is the calmest of his creations, he doesn’t know. Sometimes, the sky remains overcast, threatening to pitter-patter, to further rust. Other times, the wind has completely overtaken his hearing. It is so calm, and yet so, so miniscule. There is nothing he can change, nothing he can will to be.

From birth to ‘death’, the cage’s door has always been closed.

Only now, it has swung open, its hinges firmly in-tact. The vines, the blooms, the entrapment is still there.

Akechi Goro is nineteen.

He is guilty, but he is free.

━━━━━━━━━━

As Kurusu keeps blatantly reminding him, the past is the past.

Goro doesn’t quite know how he’s alive, doesn’t know why he’s here. But, it’s been a little over a year, he’s somehow in college — he doesn’t know what for at this point. He didn’t plan on making it this far.

But he’s here, sitting at his usual seat at the bar of Leblanc, fingers curled through the handle of his favorite mug. Calling it his favorite is a stretch; this is a restaurant, and he’s certainly not entitled to using this same mug every time that he comes in, but he would be a failure of an ex-Detective if he didn’t recognize the staining over the ceramic over the years, the small chip it has on the lip, and how Kurusu keeps fucking giving this mug to him. Probably for some sentimental reason that Goro just can’t wrap his head around.

Since … coming back, he’s been a bit of a spectre amongst the old friend group; they haven’t particularly shut him out, despite every reason to do so.

( “I killed your mother,” Goro snaps, almost exasperated.

“I —” Futaba shifts, fingers tapping against her forearm. “I know. But there’s … nothing we can really do about that. You were just a kid.”

Goro deadpans, “That doesn’t change anything.”

The expression she wears is worn, defeated. “I … I know. It’s not like I forgive you. But .. it’s not like you’re leaving anytime soon, and you being here makes Akira happy. So …”

He sips from his mug, and waits patiently. It’s minimal, what he can offer her.

“. . . We can try,” she mutters, “If — if you want. Being friends.”

Goro doesn’t know what he wants.

“... It’s not my decision to make,” he offers, and that’s the closest to acceptance they will ever get. )

Still, they haven’t, with some of them even attempting to reach him — he doesn’t know what he wants. He’s only accepted a handful of invitations to go do various things around the city, and all of them thus far have reminded him of a nostalgic, but horribly bitter taste in his mouth. Although, that trip to the cafe for crepes with Takamaki truly wasn’t as bad as he anticipated that going. . . He turned down exactly three different ramen-shop visits from Sakamoto, two game nights with Sakura, and outright avoided Haru Okumura entirely. He isn’t ready to deal with that. He’s even somehow dodged modeling with Kitagawa, although that out of all of his options sounds the most viable.

It’s the day after he turns down a trip to Destinyland with the whole group that Kurusu decides to say something.

“Goro,” Akira begins — there’s a clean rag wiping the inside of a mug. It’s been a few minutes past closing.

He’s still nursing his own drink, and lifts an eyebrow in inquisition.

“. . . You keep turning down plans,” he continues; Akira is dangerously neutral. “It’s not that big of a deal, I mean, but … The others have mentioned it. Like you’re avoiding it.”

Quick, think of a —

“Before you say it, I know you’re not busy with classwork,” Akira interjects, and Goro’s back-up plan is lost.

Goro uncomfortably shifts in his seat, slowly placing his mug down on the mahogany. His still-gloved fingers (he refuses to drop this habit, he can’t ), thrum idly next to it, and he tries to collect himself a little more. Akira waits patiently as always, working on drying the rest of the mugs while he does. He’s too good for Goro. They’re not even together, and he’s still too good for Goro.

“I, uhm.” His voice cracks, and quickly fixes it with a cough into his fist, “I’m … not quite used to it, just yet. It .. Outings, and all that. It’s nothing they did.”

Goro expects a snarky remark, but is only met with the soft gunmetal of his eyes, forearms pressed into the counter, folded over each other.

Age has done Akira well. His jaw is a little more filled out, and he actually looks like a proper human instead of a collection of scrawny, gangly limbs; he’s dropped using those fashion glasses he was so insistent on wearing in high school, and it’s striking what his expression does to the butterflies in Goro’s stomach. Unfortunately, the mop of ebon curls atop his head is untameable, much to Takamaki’s chagrin.

It’s upsetting, how stagnant Goro feels.

“That’s understandable,” Akira offers, the smallest of smiles gracing his lips — it’s terrifying how much it puts him at ease, “But, you know. . . they do care about you, Goro. Others are still coming around, but you know that Ann loves talking to you. Sumire keeps asking me how you’re doing, uhh … Yusuke keeps talking about how good of a model you’d —”

“I get it,” Goro snaps, “I do. I’m not stupid.”

“You’re not. But, knowing you, it takes a while to wrap your head around the fact that people care about you.”

Goro falls silent, and silently curses to himself. He’s right.

He sighs.

Akira reads the pages that make up Goro’s existence with ease, and idly looks outside; distantly, he can see the clouds formly, just scarcely outlined with the remaining light. “It’s going to rain soon. D’you wanna stay the night? We can talk about it more, if you want.”

Saynosaynosaynosaynosayn —

“Sure,” he hears himself say, “though I don’t have anything with me.”

“You know how I am with that. You can borrow some of mine.”

As he closes up Leblanc for the evening, they fall into their familiar routine. Goro reluctantly borrows a shirt and sweatpants, and they settle for the tape of an old movie on the shitty TV in the corner. It’s more background noise than anything interesting. Sometimes Kurusu will work on homework on the table in the corner, while he absentmindedly skims through a book on the crate-built bed. Sometimes he puts up with Kurusu’s stupid games of footsies while they debate some century old philosopher, until their eyes are too heavy to keep open.

Nonetheless, they don’t talk about it again.

Goro isn’t sure if it’s better that way.

━━━━━━━━━━

“We should go somewhere.”

His back is pressed against the crate’s of the makeshift bed of Leblanc’s attic, the static whir of air movement just scarcely lifting caramel bangs from his forehead. To be quite honest, it’s frankly fucking miserable sitting up here, but it doesn’t look like Akira is doing much better, half-lidded eyes staring vacantly against the fan’s blades. A popsicle rests idly between his index and middle finger, haphazardly biting down on corn syrup, sugar and ice. This one’s particularly tart. Green Apple.

“Well,” he begins — “Where would you want to go?”

Akira hums, teeth biting into his own popsicle without a second thought; “Dunno. It’s summer, there’s nothing to do here that we don’t normally do. A breath of fresh air would be nice.”

“You do realize that there isn’t … much to do elsewhere, right? If there’s anywhere that will have things to do, it’s going to be here.”

“See, you’d be right, but,” Akira counters with ease; his eyes flicker to him, and Goro represses his stuttered heart, “There’s nothing natural out here. When’s the last time you saw a good tree? The ocean?”

He falls silent, perhaps a fraction of a second too long. His brows furrow, and his eyes have fixated in the crack of a board on the ceiling — one of the beams. Akira shifts, and his stomach is no longer pressed to the floor, but shoulder-to-shoulder with him. He must’ve given up trying with the fan, he reasons, but can’t bring himself to look down.

“Goro,” Akira begins softly — he hates it, “have you ever been on vacation before .. ?”

“You miss home,” Goro immediately deflects, and another bite is taken from the popsicle.

“I — guess? Maybe not home, it’s — it’s never been ‘home’. You, of all people, should get that,” Akira retorts, the same air of frustration lining his tongue, “but the … The ambience of smaller towns. You could actually see the stars, trees are tall enough to climb, less people around swimming … It’s not much, but … I think you’d enjoy it. Taking a step back.”

Goro hums non-committed; Akira only sighs further into the side of the mattress.

He has to remind himself that there is nothing keeping him from saying how he feels, now. The tension-filled silences carry even now, more than a year after the finality of Takuto Maruki’s shitshow. But this time, nothing’s holding him to his hostility — nothing but a cripplied self-pride. Akira doesn’t deserve this, but he doesn’t want Akira’s pity.

The image of the opened, rusting bird-cage flashes in his mind, and his eyes flutter shut.

“... You might be right.” Akechi Goro swallows it, just this once.

“When would you want to go?”

━━━━━━━━━━

Akira and Goro agree on a couple of days in the countryside, packing minimally and enduring the several-hour train ride. The window shimmers with yellowed grasses and azureal skies, the occasional shape of a cloud overtaking his attention for a good, solid minute. He doesn’t have the heart to consistently check his phone like Akira does. There’s nothing being sent to him, and he’s already shut the damned thing off to stave away his paranoia.

Their check-in is some time within the evening, with the warm toned horizon overtaking the windows of a lightly-painted hotel lobby. It's small, but quaint; while the actual conversations are a blur, a mixture amongst each other, he doesn’t disregard the shift of colors as they partake. How the setting light glows gently on the crown of Akira’s head as he speaks, the shadows of his face warmly encompassing the golden highlights. It’s ethereal, observing how that glow never changes from pristine window pane to dim hotel hallway lighting, and Goro attempts to suck in his stuttering breath.

The stagnance sits patiently with him, twiddling his thumbs with his weight pressed into the hotel room mattress.

The walls are caked with years of nicotine; the furniture is out of date, and the lamp’s lightbulb flickers if he leaves it on after a little. He’s given up using it, instead relying on the dying light outside the window, and shining his phone’s flashlight against the ceiling. (He keeps his phone on airplane mode, but it’s not quite the same). The room feels oddly nostalgic, and yet entirely foreign — these are the rooms, the spaces where people go to die. Whether it be with a bullet to the head or the erasure of an identity, these are the spaces where it unfolds.

It reminds him of his mother. It reminds him of home.

Yet it’s him, and the boy he’d killed; the boy he so feverishly loves. He already pulled the trigger. Will Akira Kurusu return the favor, or will he do something much worse?

“Goro.”

Before he can comprehend it, there’s a bright flash that goes off in his peripheral, and his head instinctively jerks in Akira’s direction. The frame of a polaroid camera sits gingerly in his fingers, and an image slowly spits out of its printer. When the camera lowers, a smirk lines his lips, and he haphazardly sits beside him, shaking the image with the stuffy air.

“What the hell, ” he snaps, “was that about? You should’ve asked.”

Akira’s laughing, the bastard, “I know, I know, I’m sorry, I just — you’re brooding. It was a good framing. If I’d said anything, the spell would’ve broken.”

“That’s — I don’t brood. I was thinking.”

“Yeah, right. About?”

His throat instinctively closes, and his eyes avert — the genuine curiosity that flickers in Akira’s eyes can’t be right. He could lie. There’s many, many things that he could lie about; the quips come like second nature, and yet it’s a fleeting attempt, losing his footing with how closely his rival sits. Ever since coming back, his ability to blatantly lie, regardless of whether Akira sees through his bullshit or not, has diminished. He waits. He’s stuck. His memory always reminds him of the raw, unbridled emotion in Akira’s features when he’d learned he was alive after all.

He doesn’t want to see that anymore.

“S’not a big deal,” he grumbles instead, and shifts his weight off of the mattress. “I’m going out.”

“I’ll go with you.” Akira has already risen from the bed, sliding on his sneakers without much of a care in the world, while Goro reaches over to tie the laces over his feet. His hair is blocking his vision of the floor, but that’s fine; he straightens up when he’s done, and that’s the end of that.

They end up with drinks from the corner store, tucked away in Goro’s backpack, and in the middle of a grass field maybe ten minutes away from the outskirts of town. Akira doesn’t even bother to use his phone’s flashlight, much to Goro’s chagrin; not being able to fully interpret or understand what awaits in the grass for him is … unnerving, and sticks just a tad bit closer to him than he’d hoped to do. This is all his idea, anyway, he attempts to justify, if he wants to do this, I’ll make it his problem. They seat themselves on a hill across the meadows.

Goro can distantly smell the scent of saltwater, and idly ponders how it would feel, lapping his ankles.

“See? This is the kinda thing I’m talkin’ about,” Akira begins; his grin is only illuminated by the distant stars, glittering the sky. “You can see more than just the supergiants, or the ones only a couple light years away. They’re everywhere.”

He inclines his head reluctantly, fingers twisting around the cap of one of the bottles they’d obtained. And, Akira is right — this is quite pretty. The glimmering dots litter the sky with no order, no laws holding them to a rigid form. Nature is chaos, and yet it is with form all the same. His eyes draw imaginary lines in between the brighter and dimmer dots, attempting to vacantly recall a few constellation names. When nothing comes to mind, he grimaces, but doesn’t tear his vision away.

“You seem to enjoy the stars, Kurusu,” he said somewhat bitterly. He attempts to kill the tone.

Akira shrugs, his back pressed into the hill, forearms holding up his weight. “I had a few books about it when I was younger; there’s a few facts here and there I remember, but a lot of it’s spotty by now.”

“Oh? What’s so significant about … what, giant spheres of chemically atomic pieces of the universe? They live, they burn out, some explode, some don’t. It’s quite blunt, to be honest.”

Funny, it’s the very means of the universe, the very sky above that hinders him from questioning the hidden intention. But, staring into such a darkened sky with little light left to highlight the silhouette of the world surrounding them, the most he can comprehend is the vacant warmth radiating from Akira, and the gentle breeze tickling his nose.

“Well, if you lay down for a second, I can try to explain,” Akira quips, but it isn’t an accusation.

Goro begrudgingly complies, head pressed into the dirt below.

And so Akira does; he speaks of the origin of cultural myths, of how the stars have been guiding humankind globally long before society had truly risen. How the stars were a sense of community, of connection for many, finding meaning where it otherwise might not be. He speaks particularly of Orihime and Hikoboshi — star-crossed lovers separated by the universe, allowed only to meet one a single day, at a very specific time, no better than two passing comets. While the celebration of their reunification is particularly a month away, Akira tells him it’s completely fair to think about now.

He considers the implications, but his eyes are half-lidded, and the unfamiliarity is becoming comfortable.

Goro doesn’t realize when he’s fallen asleep, soda bottle half-finished and shoulders touching with Akira’s. He doesn’t acknowledge the gentle fingertips that brush against his fringe, or the gentle fanning of breath as the other rests, noses gently tapped against one another.

━━━━━━━━━━

“I’ve never been in the ocean,” he says to Akira over dinner, and he isn’t quite sure why.

He fiddles with the pair of chopsticks pressed between his fingers; “I figured as much. You didn’t respond when I’d asked you about it before.”

Goro grumbles some idly, but otherwise returns to finishing his plate. The next day has passed with the same blur that whirred past him when they’d arrived, having woken up as the Sun had risen, and wandered about the town in attempts to explore, but hopefully not get too caught in tourist traps. Akira has collected a small set of knick-knacks — ( “Souvenirs,” Akira had told him, stuffing them casually into Goro’s backpack. He’d laughed when Goro swatted his arms away, and he hasn’t heard anything quite as pretty. ) — and they’ve managed to move, but not quite tire themselves out.

His brow furrows.

“I don’t need your pity about it,” he quips, half-lidded crimson eyes boring into the man across the table. “You say it like it’s a bad thing. No, my mother and I simply never had time, and where would I have fit a beach vacation into my ‘personal hitman disguised as a detective celebrity’ schedule?”

“You know, you could’ve gone with us. If you wanted.”

“What, with you and your brainless friends?”

“ Our friends. And, they’re not brainless — you don’t give them enough credit.”

“Didn’t Takamaki mention a particular time when Sakamoto attempted to fist fight a cat?”

“That was Morgana, and — haven’t you also attempted to fight the cat?”

“. . . Point taken.”

“But I’m serious,” Akira continues — “I know you had a lot going on, I’m not holding this against you by any means; but, you’re allowed to go do things now. Whether you think it’s ‘brainlessly sentimental’ or not, the invitations are still extended. We want you around. I want you around.”

Goro scoffs; “That sounds awfully like a confession, Kurusu-kun.”

“What if it is?”

Something in Goro snaps — there are only so many shortcuts, so many hoops that he can jump through.

“What the fuck is your point?” He hisses; his fingers pinch the end of his straw, “ In — in all of this? Is this some sort of pseudo-therapy session to attempt to guilt me into — into not thinking about what happened? What have I been through the last, what, nineteen years of my life? If you’re looking for self-remorse, or, or a better version of whoever the hell is sitting across from you right now, you’re not going to fucking get it. I can go home without you at any time.”

Akira’s face is eerily calm — the chills it sends down his spine are more than enough to affirm he’s lost.

It’s a moment before Akira speaks again.

“That’s — not … Goro,” he begins — it’s uneven, the way he chooses his words. The infallible leader from years past is gone now, dead in that hotel room. “I let you go in February because I knew that .”

“Knew what? That I was a remorseless killer?”

“That what is done is done. If — if I just blindly asked you to forget about it, you wouldn’t be Akechi Goro.”

Akira’s utensil clinks gently to the plate placed in front of him, and his glass is brought gently to his lips, pondering how to finish the statement. Despite it all, Goro sits patiently, eyes boring holes into his skull, imagining bullets where the gaps in Akira’s head should be. He hates seeing it, over and over and over again.

“. . . I killed you,” Goro huffs, but all of its energy is lost.

“I know. But knowing you’re real is enough for me.”

━━━━━━━━━━

The sky is a mosaic of crimson and marigolds, and Akechi Goro feels the ocean for the first time.

The water is cold — goosebumps shiver down his skin each time the waves lap over him, and he attempts to suck it down. Akira, perfect Akira, takes it in stride, eyes fixated to the same sky, the same clouds as he; he watches the glimmer of the setting sun sparkle in his iris, back pressed gently into the wetted sand below. Goro’s foot gently kicks up a shell, which he has to watch as he touches. He can’t bring himself to get his hair wet, so he’s settled for his forearms pressed into the ground. It’s … comfortable.

Salt lines the outskirts of his lungs. He’s starting to understand.

“I’ve been thinking about it,” Goro mutters, “and I don’t think you just ‘missed nature’, Akira.”

His eyes shift up to him, but otherwise, he doesn’t say anything. He’s expecting Goro to continue.

“There’s comfort in the lack of familiarity here, but not the same as Tokyo. Tokyo’s anonymity is through numbers, being a lost face in the crowd. You — no matter where or who you’ve been, you have never been just that. ”

He thinks of years past, and wonders where his edge has gone.

“This,” he continues — he’s rambling, but for once, he doesn’t care, “this is where people go to die. The hotel room, I keep — I keep thinking about it. People drag themselves out here to be forgotten. Out of all ways of doing it, whether it’s by cyanide or legal documentation, this is just the most beautiful way to go out.”

By now, Goro has shifted a little closer, and he can’t help properly looking at him. How peaceful his complexion pales in the setting horizon, exposed shoulders pressed into the earth — how his hair curls and dances with the breeze. Laying here, it’s as if he’s become part of the world as night falls. Does he notice how he blends? How does he creates the colors that brighten Goro’s world, that has once been so dull? It burns and sickens him, how easily it is to let Akira go. To let him return to the earth, in a death more peaceful than any love Goro could ever give him.

Kurusu Akira grants him death in the most colorful of ways.

Goro’s hand just barely skims the skin of Akira’s forearms, leaning in properly, fingertips dancing against the paled skin, the finest of hairs.

“I think,” he murmurs, “you wanted a taste of what you gave me in February, if only just for a little bit.”

Akira has not moved since he’d begun, his eyes having never strayed. But, it’s here where his hand slowly, ever so slowly lifts. An extended palm reaches into the canvas above them. The waves crash distantly as they skitter, slowly sliding to cup the side of Goro’s cheek.

From the rusting cage, the bird quietly sings.

“You’re right,” Akira affirms — and he smiles, ever so gently. “I do. But I knew, even deep down, you weren’t dead. I couldn’t have died without knowing.”

“Would you consider this purgatory, then?”

“Being here? Two boys who should definitely be dead, completely unrecognizable by public figures of any kind?”

“Answer the question, Akira.”

Akira’s fingertip gently thrums against Goro’s jaw, as if enticing him to lean in further, further — his forehead gently bumps with his, but rather than pulling away, Goro intakes the gently fanning of breath through closed eyes, the gently brush of the tip of Akira’s nose. His hands haven’t left.

“If limbo is the only place I can find you,” he whispers, “then I’ll take another bullet to my head.”

When their lips meet, the fireworks and explosions that Goro imagines going off have diffused in the ocean shoreline, simply melting into the touch, the taste of Akira. He still registers watermelon from his soda on the walk to the beach on his lips, and finds it the same when their tongues slide together. Every inch of him wants to rip, and tear, and bite until there’s nothing of Akira that remains underneath him, but this kiss is still slow, it is still languid. A kiss of ragged teeth and ripped flesh is what he deserves, but Akira’s ethereality shouldn’t be tarnished like that.

He slowly pulls away when he’s simply ran out of air to breathe, lips kissed a pretty pink. He can see the bruised colors all over Akira, who’s grinning up at him — Goro’s weight is gently pressed over his side, a forearm straddling Akira in place. It’s not anything particularly forceful, more of regards for balance, but the view of Akira’s face in the midst of his own auburn locks is …

“How long have you wanted to do that?” The words are defensive, and out of his mouth before he comprehends.

Shit, wait, fuck, I —

“Long,” Akira replies swiftly, “Far too long.”

All of his defenses have been taken and torn down, but surrendering to Kurusu Akira, the only boy he’s ever loved, keeps the flame of fear from burning him alive as he leans back in to connect them once more.

━━━━━━━━━━

The hotel room is stuffy when he wakes in the early morning.

He isn’t quite awake, nor does he want to be, but his consciousness forces his nose to scrunch, his brows to furrow, in attempts to understand what’s surrounding him. He doesn’t quite remember getting back into their hotel room, they had gone out into the town again that night, and —

There’s a sinking weight pressed into his shoulder blade.

The tip of his nose meets the crown of messy black hair, and it slowly, ever so slowly, clicks.

It’s okay. He’s okay.

He lets an arm haphazardly curl its away around Akira’s sleeping form, the fear dissolving into the dust of their cheaply rented room. The nicotine still bothers him, and the lamp still doesn’t fucking work, but this is the closest to happy and safe he’s ever felt.

His eyes flutter shut wordlessly.

━━━━━━━━━━

Akechi Goro is twenty.

He is guilty, but he is free.