Chapter Text
Goro's nightly routine, when he isn't staying out too late in the Metaverse, involves a carefully crafted, multi-step skincare regimen. He's in the process of carefully applying serum to help keep his skintone even and finally work on removing that unsightly red mark he's had since he was fifteen and didn't know how to handle a pimple, and he's contemplating the merits of doing a full face mask or getting an extra fifteen minutes of sleep. Both sides have their uses, but given it's already after midnight, he's leaning towards sleeping early. He's been busier than usual following Akira's death, weighed down with interviews and an endless amount of questions from Shido about the specifics of the entire situation, so he's -- exhausted, if he's honest.
Which is, of course, when there's a knock at his door. Goro pauses. He picks his phone up, swiping across the screen, but there's no missed notifications. There's a silent group chat with the Phantom Thieves (he assumes they simply started a new one), it's late enough that none of his social media is giving him alerts, and he certainly hasn't missed any calls from Shido recently, so…
The paparazzi, maybe? Goro's skeptical of the idea, but he can't imagine it'd be anything else. He gives himself a glance in the mirror. He looks… fine; his pajamas are matching blue argyle and his face looks a little shinier than usual, interrupted in the middle of his skincare as he was, so he blots at his face with a wash cloth as he steps over to the door, making no effort to take his hair down from the ponytail. He hopes he looks like he's been interrupted. It's entirely too late for anyone to be knocking on the door. He wants them to feel some modicum of guilt.
Whoever it is has their back turned to the door, which is all he can see through the door viewer. It's certainly… suspicious, but Goro can't imagine anyone is here to threaten him at nearly one in the morning on a school night. Certainly not anyone that looks to be his height.
"Can I help--" Goro starts as he opens the door, and then drops his pleasant tone instantly when the figure whirls around.
It's Akira, fucking Kurusu Akira that should be dead. Goro shot him in the head himself, and yet here he is, at Goro's doorstep less than a week later, looking like absolute shit but very, very alive.
"I killed your dad," Akira blurts, and Goro's grip on the door tightens. "I didn't -- I'm sorry. I didn't know where else to go."
Goro's first thought is that he doesn't have a dad, and what is Akira talking about, but then Goro digests
His voice cracks, and he sounds so absolutely pathetic that Goro can't help but be disgusted. Goro glances over Akira's head, thinking fast. Akira isn't dead, which means the thieves are still active; they're likely working on changing Shido's heart, which would presumably be going reasonably well with their leader intact. Goro has been to Shido's palace before, and he knows it isn't an easy thing to get through, but they've gotten through worse.
Moreover, Akira knows that Shido is Goro's father, and given that he looks both beat up and bloodied, Goro doesn't think this murder took place in the Metaverse.
"I refuse to discuss this with you on my doorstep," Goro says, and steps aside. Akira rushes in, a bundle of nervous energy, and thunks back against the wall like the mere act of getting inside has sapped the rest of his will to live.
"Sorry," Akira says again, an echo of himself. He pulls his hood back, and Goro can see more of the damage. Akira's eyes are red and his skin is spectacularly splotchy, both from the fact that he looks like he's been crying and the fact that someone beat the shit out of him. A blossoming black eye, a split lip, what looks like the imprint of the heel of a shoe on his jaw, and they're all layered on top of the only mostly healed wounds he'd sustained during his interrogation.
"Don't apologize," Goro says, coolly. He's falling back on old habits, he thinks, because even he can't quite keep up with this situation. His gun is in his bedroom, and he doesn't particularly want to murder Akira in his condo, and --
Honestly, it would feel like cheating to murder Akira right now. Which is particularly stupid, but Goro has spent quite awhile compartmentalizing his relationship with Akira as a game that he was winning, and he can't quite go back now that he's apparently lost.
Goro can't even begin to think about the fact that Shido is dead at Akira's hands, because the entire concept leaves a cold numbness spreading inside of him that threatens to make him sick.
"So--" Akira starts, and then stops. It'd be funny if he wasn't so pitiful.
"Take your shoes off, at least," Goro says. Goro's apartment is hardly well decorated -- he tries not to spend much time in it, truthfully, and murder does not actually pay well -- but he has a kitchen table and two chairs, despite the fact that he has never once had company over since he moved in. He gestures for Akira to take one, regardless, and then steps away to get his first aid kit.
It's well stocked, at least; Goro is used to taking care of his own injuries. Unlike some more fortunate people, he didn't have a breadth of healing spells at his disposal, which meant that he had to be careful and learn how to give himself stitches when he failed early on.
He does consider the gun. It's in his dresser, hidden from view, if only barely. But there's no point in trying to threaten Akira right now, and there's even less of a point in trying to conceal it in his pajamas.
Truly, what a mess.
Akira has his elbows on the table in a stunning lack of etiquette when Goro steps back in.
"I assume you have no inclination to see an actual doctor," Goro says, dryly.
Akira just looks at him, his gaze still too raw and wounded. He doesn't have on his glasses, and without that barrier Goro feels like everything is transmitted a little more loudly, a little more solidly. It's certainly harder for Goro to avoid.
"I shouldn't," Akira says, "involve anyone else, right?"
Goro's mouth quirks into a smile as he sits, pulling his chair alongside Akira's. "I'm elated that you consider me worthy of being an accomplice. Take off your jacket."
Akira takes his hoodie off, folding it awkwardly in his lap. He looks even worse without it; smaller and shrunken in on himself. Goro flicks the kit open and starts dabbing at Akira's face with an antiseptic wipe. Akira doesn't even flinch.
"I couldn't go home," Akira says, quietly. "I can't tell anyone else yet."
"But I'm safe to tell that you've committed murder?" Goro asks, tone deceptively casual as he continues cleaning Akira's wounds. "You'll want to shower before I bandage most of these. They won't kill you."
"It's just that," Akira says, "I knew you wouldn't pity me. I thought maybe you'd be angry, but I can deal with that."
Goro hates how well he understands.
"I did try to murder you," Goro says, without any delicacy. "Succeeded, actually, from my point of view, even if I'm the only one to remember it." He remembers with television clarity the sight of Akira dying -- his wide eyes, the contrast of the memory turned up too high until the blood was too bright, the bits of skull that flecked out of the way of the bullet --
That Akira looks nothing like this Akira. This Akira looks sad; desperate. He looks wounded and frustrated and like an exhausted caged animal that's lost half the will to fight but won't stop backing away anyway.
Goro can't believe he fell for shooting a fake Akira, now that he's looking at the real thing again.
"I know," Akira says. "We had a whole plan about it. We just… didn't think Shido would kidnap me."
"Where?" Goro asks. He doesn't elaborate; Akira has always been quick at understanding Goro's meaning. Akira's face is largely cleaned, save for the wounds that are seeping out fresh blood. Goro presses a gauze pad to the worst of it. "Hold these here and lift up your shirt."
Akira does as he's told, leaning back a little to expose his ribs. This time he does flinch when Goro traces his fingers across the ribs, and Goro finds a dull sense of gratification in the reminder that Akira is still a fallible human.
"Shinjuku," Akira says. "I was meeting a friend. I think -- I think my ribs are broken."
"At least one of them," Goro replies. "This is going to hurt." He presses against the ribs, watching the way they move and feeling the give underneath his fingers. Akira lets out a strangled, throaty sort of gasp and then clamps his hand over his mouth. Cute. Goro's hardly about to judge him for that, after everything else.
"They're cracked, but they aren't broken badly enough to require a doctor's oversight," Goro says. He'd usually never give this kind of advice, because of course a cracked rib should involve a hospital visit, but he's cracked his own ribs before and simply wrapped them up and gone on with his life, and it feels presumptuous to be a hypocrite at this point.
"Okay," Akira says, and looks relieved.
"Take a shower," Goro says. "Do you have your phone?"
"They broke it."
"Then which of your friends do you want me to contact?" Goro asks. "I still have most of their numbers."
Akira looks hunted.
"None of them," he says, too quickly. He stands up and reaches for Goro's sleeve, and the motion means he winces at the way he puts too much strain on his ribcage, but he doesn't let go. "I can't --"
"Fine," Goro says, reaching over to pry Akira's fingers off of his pajama sleeve. "I won't let any of them know that their illustrious leader just committed a murder, but if they come knocking at my door it'll be more attention than you want right now."
"They wouldn't," Akira says. He hesitates, not quite meeting Goro's eyes for a moment, then scrubs at his face as best he can when it's a minefield of painful injuries. "Your phone is bugged."
Of course it is. Goro doesn't know why he expected anything less. He runs through the opportunities -- he'd kept his phone on him at all times, but there were a few moments where it had been stolen in the name of photos. He supposes it was one of those, even though he didn't think they'd had it for long enough and it had been in plain sight.
It's appalling how much he'd underestimated them, actually.
"Is she eavesdropping on this conversation?"
Akira's eyes flicker towards Goro's phone, and then close. "She'd have called."
"Then once you're cleaned and look presentable, we'll contact her, because I'm certainly one of the first doors they'll break down looking for you," Goro says. It feels -- strange, to be giving Akira orders, but Akira just looks at him with red-rimmed eyes, and Goro feels all the fight getting sapped out of him. Goro had given suggestions in the casino, certainly, but it had been as a means to an end. He'd been clearly manipulating, and the lines of their relationship had never blurred, as far as Goro was concerned.
He doesn't know what to make of this situation. All his anger is evaporating with the news of Shido's death, and Goro doesn't know what he's meant to put there. He can't muster any real ill will towards Akira for it. He can't muster much at all, except what he acknowledges is his normal trauma response of trying to make a situation tenable again. Get Akira fixed up, send him on his way, and then…
Well. He'll figure it out.
"Sorry," Akira says.
"Do stop apologizing," Goro says, and stands up. Akira doesn't move to follow; his head makes a careful arc as he tracks Goro uncertainly. "You came to me deliberately, because you thought I would either finish the job or help you, so there's no reason to pretend you regret showing up."
Akira looks at Goro, and then looks away. Goro watches Akira's eyes fill with tears and feels something suspiciously guilt-like rise like bile in his throat, so Goro simply turns away.
"I'll fill the bath for you," Goro says, like Akira is just here for a luxurious soak and not to take a shower to wipe away the literal blood on his hands.
Akira doesn't say anything.
Goro takes a second to ground himself, in the bathroom, the tub filling next to him. He smacks the tile wall, just once, enough to make the entire palm of his hand light up in pain like he'd stuck it into a fire, and he focuses in on that for a second. It isn't nearly enough to blot out the background noise, right now, but it isn't like he can go pick a fight in the metaverse, so it'll have to do.
The thing he's been working towards for years has been undone. Shido is dead, Akira isn't, and Goro is -- fine. He's alive, with no warrant out for his arrest for the murder of famed politician Masayoshi Shido, and Goro isn't connected to the situation at all.
This time it is bile that rises in Goro's throat, because he simply never intended to exist as a human concept past getting his revenge on Shido, and that's been pretty well ruined, now, hasn't it?
Most things in Goro's life get ruined. He doesn't know why he expected this to be any different.
He looks up to see Akira in the door of the bathroom. He looks uncertain. He looks as tired as Goro feels right now. Goro's sheet mask plans feel like they're a thousand miles away, now.
"I left the gun there," Akira says. There's a little bit of his old tone of voice in there -- he gets through the sentence without stumbling, even if everything he says is blunted around the edges. Goro wonders if he'd thrown up. Goro certainly did.
"Did you leave your fingerprints on it?" Goro asks. It's strange to be talking about it so clinically. Goro has never had to talk about any of his murders like this, it was simply -- are they dead, good job, keep it coming, don't tell anyone about this or you'll be next, and so on and so forth in a teeth-grindingly monotonous sort of evil.
"No. I mean -- I wiped them off, but I don't know if they're really gone. I made it look like a guard had shot him, but I think my blood is… everywhere. Probably my hair, too," Akira says. He reaches up, fingers finding a specific curl on the side of his head and twirling it lightly. It's such a normal motion for Akira to make that Goro feels a little of his tension release.
"That's the best you could have done," Goro says. His tone is tired, and he can't quite manage to change it into anything else. It's almost one in the morning. He has no idea how he's going to find the energy to smile tomorrow. (That's a lie; he's worked harder experiences off less sleep before, but those were all when he was still working towards a goal that's now been rendered obsolete.)
Akira doesn't answer, and Goro lets the silence linger on just long enough to be awkward. Akira seems immune to it, too lost in his own head, and Goro steps out of the bathroom.
"Clean up," Goro says. "I'm going to refresh my first aid kit."
Akira nods, a little vacantly. Goro is a bit unsure about the merits of leaving Akira unattended in his condo, but there isn't anything to be done about the situation. Akira starts to take off his clothing, and Goro retreats, because his condo is a much different situation than the bath house, and he doesn't need to see Akira's naked body when it's covered in bruises Goro didn't even get to put there.
Goro blithely deletes his own mental thoughts from his memory before he can analyze them. He's got a pretty good track record of simply ignoring his own feelings, and there's no reason to ruin that yet.
He waits until he hears the shower start up before he pulls his coat on. There's no sense in getting dressed when it's one in the morning, but he loops a flu mask over his ears before he heads out. Between the ponytail and the mask, he shouldn't have to worry about getting recognized.
It's cold, but not intolerably so; Goro spends a brief moment wishing his pajama pants were more well-insulated, but the chill is helping keep him awake. The cashier at the convenience store is visibly completely uninterested in Goro's presence, giving the most lacklustre possible welcome in, which Goro doesn't fault her for at all.
It's more than a little suspicious to have a basket full of nothing but first aid supplies, so Goro throws in a few other things to make it seem like he isn't caring for a deeply injured phantom thief leader. Almost as an afterthought, he throws in a few cans of coffee and some rice balls. He's been careful not to let anyone in his condo before, and of course Akira is in absolutely no position to judge him, but Goro still has absolutely no food that isn't microwaveable in his kitchenette.
The cashier raises one single eyebrow when he deposits his items, but doesn't ask any questions or volunteer anything more than his total.
"Thank you," Goro says, automatically, and the cashier repeats it back politely enough. There's two empty coffee cups behind her and a stack of college textbooks, so he gathers his own things in sympathy and lets her resume frowning at math.
Goro steps back inside his condo and is halfway through toeing off his left shoe before he realizes something is odd. It takes him an extra minute to place what it is -- he really isn't used to anyone else being in his apartment -- but he finally places it as the water in the shower still running. Goro's condo has its own water heater, and he knows for a fact that it wouldn't have lasted the entire thirty-five minutes of Goro's shopping trip.
He drops his coat onto the floor as soon as he gets his shoes off and deposits the bags in the hall vaguely near the kitchen before he opens the door to the bathroom. Akira didn't lock it, which seems like an oversight but is, in this case, a bit of a blessing, given that Akira is sitting, shivering, under the cold shower spray, scrubbing at his hands.
"Kurusu," Goro says, and Akira doesn't react. "Kurusu."
It doesn't work to get his attention, so Goro takes in a breath and steels himself for the potential explosive reaction of touching someone clearly in the middle of having a panic attack, and shakes Akira's shoulder. Akira jumps, nearly falling off the stool as he jerks his gaze towards Goro. His fingertips are blue when he presses them to his forearms. His eyes flicker around the bathroom, like he'd forgotten where he was for a moment before they manage to settle back on Goro.
"--Akechi," Akira says.
"Well," Goro says, "at least you haven't completely lost your mind, then."
Akira is quiet as Goro turns the shower off.
"Sor--" Akira starts. He darts a glance up at Goro, and then looks away again, restarting his sentence. "...you didn't need to get wet."
"Come on," Goro says, in exasperation, reaching out to haul Akira up to his feet. Akira takes his hands, and the movement sends enough air circulating that Akira gives a particularly violent shiver. He looks at the tub.
"I--"
"Absolutely not," Goro says. "It's set to 38 degrees, you'll put your body into shock." More shock than he's already in, Goro mentally amends.
It's extremely strange to be taking care of anyone. Goro can barely take care of himself, and he's well aware that all the face masks in the world can't make up for the fact that he lives on convenience store bento and LeBlanc curry. But it isn't like he can just throw Akira out, either, and as infuriating as it is to think about, Goro is the only one in Akira's social circle who can even begin to understand what Akira is going through.
Goro drops a towel onto Akira's head.
"Dry off. You'll need to warm up before I can do anything about your wounds," Goro says. Akira pulls the towel around himself, and Goro debates on whether or not he should leave the bathroom before deciding not to.
"I'm getting blood on your towel," Akira says, quietly. It's true, because Goro has beige towels (the most inexpensive at the store) and Akira has a few wounds that are still weeping blood, reopened under the stream of the shower and by the force of Akira's shivering.
"It cost me two hundred yen," Goro says, dryly. "I'll add it to your tab."
It gets a wane smile out of Akira. Goro hates how much that small reaction comforts him. He hates that anything to do with Akira's well being is a comfort, because he shot Akira in the head and shouldn't care about Akira's well being at all, but --
Goro knew his life was a glass house, but it's infuriating to deal with now that he's trying to sit in the shattered remains.
Akira rubs at his hair with the towel and Goro finally steps out. Akira follows him, hovering on the threshold between the bathroom and the hallway.
"The flooring is laminate," Goro says, "so you might as well walk on it."
Akira does. He leaves wet footprints in his wake, but they'll dry naturally if Goro doesn't get to them first. He's busy trying to get clean pajamas for the both of them, first, and he simply doesn't have enough, because he's never needed three separate pairs. He winds up in his own backup set (white, with black polka dots across the surface), and manages to fish out the gym uniform he has not worn a single time since entering his third year. It's not ideal, but it's the closest thing to loungewear Goro owns.
"Here."
Akira accepts the clothing and pulls it on automatically, and Goro debates modesty for a brief second before turning his back on Akira to replace his own wet clothing. When he turns back around, Akira is staring at him -- no, Akira is staring through him.
"Kurusu."
Akira is quicker to meet Goro's gaze, this time, and he moves his hand back up to towel off his hair like a chastised child.
"...Sit down," Goro says. "I'll dry your hair."
"It'll get puffy," Akira argues, quietly, but it's the most objection he's given to anything since he arrived on Goro's doorstep.
"I think I can manage to wrangle your hair for a single night to make sure you don't die of a cold," Goro says, and that wane smile comes back for a moment.
"Sure, dad," Akira says, and then immediately freezes. Goro doesn't stop moving: he puts his hands on Akira's shoulders and guides him to sit on the floor so Goro can blow dry his hair.
Goro remembers his first kill. He remembers it in chunks and pieces and he can fill in the rest, the blurred journey from the metaverse to the shitty apartment he lived in back then. He remembers thinking it was stupid for him to be so upset about killing someone in the metaverse when it wasn't real, and he remembers the exact moment it was real -- standing in his apartment, getting a phonecall from Shido saying maybe there was a use for him after all, the dull baritone resounding in Goro's head as he hung up and threw up everything he'd managed to eat over the previous day.
It got better with each consecutive murder, of course, until he could shoot Akira in the head and walk away and pretend that the clenching of his stomach was just the bad clearance sushi he'd eaten, pretend that the way he couldn't stop replaying Akira's body falling in his mind was because he wanted to remember it as a victory.
The lies he told himself seem exceptionally fragile, now that he can't hold onto them anymore.
"Have you already been sick?" Goro asks, over the sound of the blow dryer. It's one of the few things Goro spent good money on; he keeps the heat on low and the sound isn't nearly as loud as it could be on a cheaper model.
"Huh?"
"Before you came here," Goro elaborates. "You're going to be sick, when you think about it, if you haven't been already."
"Oh," Akira says. "Yeah. I was. I threw up in someone's burnable trash."
"It was nice of you to vomit in the appropriate receptacle," Goro quips, and Akira's shoulders shake in what he thinks might have been the ghost of a laugh.
"I was still close by, so… I wanted to make sure it wouldn't be there for a long time," Akira says. Goro wants to be surprised that he had any sort of rational thought while fleeing from a murder scene, but Akira has always been relatively level-headed even during a crisis.
"It might happen again," Goro says, finally, combing his fingers through Akira's hair because his curls seem to attempt to eat all of Goro's combs. "So be careful with what you're eating, for awhile."
"Yeah," Akira agrees. At least he's being verbal.
Akira is quiet for a long moment, and it isn't until the blowdryer clicks off that he looks back at Goro.
"Does it--" Akira starts, and then stops. "It feels like it's under my skin."
"You're an inherently good person," Goro says, lightly. "So I imagine it must be considerably more intolerable for you. Try to remember that you did it to save your own life, and that your life is worth considerably more than theirs."
"Is it?" Akira asks, and it's entirely too philosophical for two in the morning.
Goro is so fucking tired.
"To anyone that's met you, yes," Goro says, and belatedly realizes he's unwittingly included himself in that statement, so he simply breezes back out of the bedroom rather than deal with it. "Come on. Let's finish bandaging you up so we can sleep."
Akira follows and does not comment on Goro's slip of the tongue. Goro counts it as fifty-fifty on if Akira even processed it, given how out of it he is.
Akira sits back down in the chair and Goro starts to bandage him up. Some of his wounds don't need it -- there's a few scrapes that'll heal better just being allowed to scab over in the dry air -- but anything deeper needs to be slathered in more antibiotic ointment and bandaged. There's enough small wounds on Akira's body that he'll already be strained healing everything, so the last thing he needs is any sort of infection.
Akira seems more sensitive this time around. He flinches whenever Goro presses on bruises too hard, and bites his lip when Goro swipes antiseptic wipes over the open wounds. There's nothing to be done about the bruises, but Goro can wrap Akira's ribs.
"Is that too tight?" Goro asks.
"...I'm not sure how tight it's supposed to be," Akira confesses.
"Can you take in a full breath?"
Akira attempts it and aborts his attempt too early, wincing. He takes a few steadying, shallow breaths, and then tries again.
"Yeah," he says.
"Then it isn't too tight," Goro concludes. He supposes it was a dumb question. "I'm impressed you didn't break anything in the interrogation."
"My doctor said if I'd been in handcuffs much longer I might have nerve damage," Akira says. Goro pretends he doesn't see him rubbing at his wrists. The marks on his wrists scream that they were from zipties instead of metal, this time, and Goro wonders if that's better or worse. He doesn't have much expertise when it comes to treating restraint injuries. No one has ever caught him long enough for that.
"Trust your doctor more than me," Goro says, and means it on at least six levels. He reaches out, carefully sweeps Akira's bangs to the side. They're still damp enough that they stay there. There's no bleeding wound, no damaged skull and no fatal bullet hole. There's a bruise where it looks like he might have been hit with someone wearing a heavy watch, but Akira is still disturbingly alive.
He's also warm again, which is a relief.
"...can I trust you both?" Akira asks. His voice is small, and Goro is very well aware that he's asking for permission.
"You shouldn't trust your murderer," Goro says, not indelicately.
"Yeah, but--" Akira starts. His tongue darts out to wet his lips and Goro watches the motion, catalogs it away as a newly discovered nervous tic like he might one day be able to understand the creature that is Akira. "You're not going to kill me anymore, right?"
"I'm not," Goro says, resignation in his voice, "but you shouldn't simply trust that, Kurusu. You're truly more of an idiot than I thought."
"That's me," Akira says, and there's a little too much self-deprecation in his tone to be healthy, but Goro is quite literally the last person on earth who can criticize him about that.
Goro packs up the rest of the first-aid kit. He shouldn't need to restock it again. Based on how well Akira's interrogation room injuries had healed, it shouldn't take too long for him to be back on his feet, broken ribs aside. If only healing spells worked in real life, he supposes.
"Incidentally," Goro says, conversationally, latching onto the brief ability to make himself sound calm and harmless, "how did you find out that Shido is my father?"
"Oh." Akira rubs at one of the bandages on his arm. "He said so. There was this whole, like, evil villain speech… He said he'd expected better from you since you were trying so hard to prove yourself as worthy of being his son."
"That," Goro says, and there's a hint of a snarl in his voice that makes Akira look at him in surprise, "is that last fucking thing I was trying to do."
It's Akira's turn to look tired.
"I guess none of us managed what we were trying to," Akira says, and Goro thinks that's almost comforting, in a 'my rival has destroyed my life's purpose and isn't even the sort of person who could do me the dignity of murdering and/or arresting me' sort of way. Are they still rivals? If they're not rivals, then are they--
Goro can handle a lot of things, but he cannot handle the idea that he might be unwillingly roped into actual friendship at two in the morning. On a school night, fuck.
"...anyway, a lot of things just clicked after that," Akira says, and he sounds a little distant.
Goro rubs at one side of his head. He keeps stumbling over his own thoughts in an uncharacteristic show of anxiety -- he'll be thinking of all the ways to handle this and then thinks that he should make sure Shido doesn't suspect Akira is alive, and then realize that he's thinking of talking to a dead man and his thoughts spin out of control all over again.
It's simply too big. There's too much for Goro to try and hold between his fingers when he was previously laser focused on one goal. Now he needs to… save Akira? From death; from jail; from Shido's men? And what about the rest of the conspiracy? Goro has never cared about them. His interest in Shido's entire clique began and ended with Shido himself, and Goro doesn't pretend to care about fairness or justice or concepts that have never been offered to him.
Akira does, though. Akira would not be in his home having periodic panic attacks if Akira didn't still believe in the right thing or some other sentimental crap.
Is Goro planning to help him? Is that what this is? This is the worst day of Goro's… well, maybe his month, he thinks, bitterly.
Goro opens his mouth to speak, and then sighs.
"Of your friends," Goro says, "who would you prefer I text? Before you tell me not to, there's only so long your guardian is going to go without starting a city wide manhunt, and there's a reasonable chance that someone will connect you to Shido's murder, so we should get ahead of that."
Akira absorbs this. He looks a little sick again, so Goro gets up to grab him one of the drug store drinks he'd grabbed. This one professes to be great for upset stomachs. Akira will probably still throw it up, but any hydration probably helps.
"...Futaba," Akira says. "We need to try and get ahead of the evidence, right? If there's anything on camera…"
"Alright," Goro says, and grabs his phone. Akira looks at it and makes no move to take it, slowly looking up at Goro instead, and Goro resists the urge to heave another particularly passive aggressive sigh. "You're incredibly lucky I still have any of you in my contacts."
He calls Sakura. She picks up before the second ring, but doesn't say anything. There's just silence. He can hear her breathing, shaky and furious, and Goro simply taps the button to enable video chat and then spins the phone so Goro's arm is in the picture and the wilted flower that is Akira Kurusu is visible in the background.
Akira blinks.
"--what happened?" Futaba yells, and Goro sits down to angle the phone so they can both be seen at least partially.
"I'm okay," Akira says, quick to reassure her.
"You're clearly not! Why are you with--"
"Shido Masayoshi kidnapped him. I wasn't involved, despite my involvement with the man, and I've been told you have my phone bugged, so you can validate that however you prefer," Goro says, and he's not entirely aware of the fact that he sounds like he's in front of a camera until Akira turns slightly to give him a strange look.
"How'd he know he was alive?" Futaba demands, and it's a fair question.
"Someone recognized me in Shinjuku," Akira says. "Is Morgana at home with you?"
"Yeah, your reporter friend brought him home, but he's been looking around Yongen-Jaya for you like you're a fetch quest we have to trigger the dialogue for," Futaba says, and not for the first time Goro mentally wonders if she actually hears herself speak.
"Okay. Um…" Akira starts. His voice cracks, and Goro moves the phone back to audio only and tucks it against his ear before Akira starts crying.
"Hey!" Futaba says.
"He was forced to murder Shido," Goro says, as clinically as possible.
"What?"
"It was kill or be killed, I imagine. I wasn't there, to my deepest chagrin," Goro says, because if Shido was going to get killed he wishes he could have seen it. He hopes it was a headshot. No, scratch that, he hopes it was to the chest, so Shido had a few seconds to regret his actions before he bled out in some unforgiving space where he'd been about to murder a teenager. "I'll try and find the address of where he was taken and send it to you, if you can remove the worst of the incriminating evidence to buy him time."
"I -- yeah," Futaba says, sounding faint. Goro thinks it must be even worse for her to hear that her beloved Akira has committed murder. "I'll back everything up so we have-- why are you helping him?"
Goro is quiet for a long moment. Futaba is clearly too used to dealing with Akira's friendly silences, because she keeps going after a moment, filling in the quiet as she thinks out loud.
"I mean, you tried to kill him-- you weren't with him? You were--"
"I was at home, intending to go to bed early," Goro says, and congratulations to him for managing to not sound completely annoyed that his plans were so thoroughly ruined. He mourns the loss of his sleep schedule. It may never recover. "He came to me, since I have the most experience with covering up murders."
There's a long silence, but he can practically feel Futaba's anger radiate through the phone. Good, he thinks; he'd much rather have all of her vitriol aimed at him rather than have her panicking over Akira. Anger is a focusing emotion, and right now if any of them want Akira to get through this they all need to be absolutely honed in on this.
"Right," Futaba says, and her voice is colder. It reverberates with the quiet, cold anger that he'd expect of her. "So how many people know you work for Shido?"
"A few of his closest associates are aware of my specific role," Goro says. "Enough that this will likely be the last place anyone looks for him."
"That's not safe enough," Futaba says. Goro can hear typing in the background. "No offense -- actually, tons of offense -- but your condo's not exactly something you can level up to be a fortress. It'd fall immediately. You'll need to get somewhere better."
"He needs rest," Goro says. To say nothing of Goro himself, who feels himself get closer to murder with every hour that vanishes between him and morning.
"Yeah… yeah," Futaba says. "I'm gonna -- I'll work on my end. You… you're helping?"
It's the moment where Goro can back out. He's been pleasant on the phone, he's been mostly pleasant all night, but he can feel the vitriol inside of him building up, that deep, black cancer that ruins everything it touches. He shouldn't help. He should walk straight to the police, tell them that he murdered Shido, and let them execute him. He'd do something moderately worthwhile, that way, since everything else has been rendered absolutely pointless.
But he can't. The target of the anger that's been fueling him for nearly half his life is gone, and the best place Goro can redirect it is at himself; at the world in general. He can't even be mad at Akira, even though he fully intends to act like it.
"I suppose I am," Goro says, finally, because there's nothing else left for him, and he really probably is the only one who can get Akira through the next few days of panic attacks. After that -- he'll revisit the drawing board on letting himself be arrested.
"... Okay," Futaba says, slowly, like she's trying to make herself accept it. "Then just send me the location of the… incident, Crow. I'll figure out what I can do from there."
"Thank you," Goro says, and tries to ignore the way something inside himself catches fire at the sound of his codename on her lips. He never wanted to hear that again. He never wanted to belong. There's a swell of self awareness inside of him, and he's aware that he won't be able to maintain lying to himself forever, not when Akira is there to punch holes in all Goro's best self-defenses, but he has to hold onto things for now.
At least one of them needs to not be having a breakdown.
Futaba hangs up without anything else, which would be rude if it was anyone else, but it's strangely comforting to Goro.
"You need the address?" Akira asks, when Goro hangs up. Akira looks scared. Goro doesn't entirely blame him.
"Yes," Goro says, "but walking me through everything that happened is going to make you sick again."
Which is going to do nothing to deter Akira, of course, because Akira Kurusu is the second most stubborn person that Goro knows.
Goro himself is the first.
Akira has not even opened his drink. It's probably for the best. He's quiet for a long moment, looking at his hands. They start shaking, and Akira clasps them together to look back at Goro.
"I was in Shinjuku, at a bar. I work there sometimes, and there's a reporter I'm friends with who goes there," Akira says. Goro mentally notes to ask why Akira works at a bar later. "When I came out, someone grabbed me. I dropped my bag, and they pulled me into a car and put something over my head. I kept trying to get up, so that's when--"
Akira traces the boot mark on his jaw. "I was dazed until they were pulling me back out, so I don't know how we got there. It was this old -- like, office space. There were cubicles. It smelled like dust and a leaky air conditioner."
It's the most Goro thinks Akira has ever said to him at once, and the words are getting quicker as Akira goes. The details aren't important, but they're being ripped out of Akira like he can't possibly contain them, and Goro knows he must be seeing it, walking back through everything and playing it out over Goro's tile floor.
"There was -- Shido was there with one man, and the two guys that grabbed me left. I didn't get a good look at those two, but the other guy was old and had a really ugly beard. He grabbed me by the hair and Shido did his -- he kept talking, about how I'd managed to evade him too long and he'd get rid of the problem himself and then he was -- going to get rid of you -- and I just thought about him shooting everyone, and how you'd be at home and he could just send someone like that cleaner and just kill you and you wouldn't even see it coming and I-- I don't know how I did it."
Akira breaks off. His hands are shaking again where he's holding them together, and he moves them up to clutch at his own forearms, bending over slightly, his posture closed off.
"I don't remember. I saw the gun and then I thought of everything else he was going to do and I knew I couldn't -- and then I had the gun and I was standing there and he was dead. The other guy wasn't. I'd shot him in the leg, but he was trying to get up, so I… finished it. And then I ran. I didn't take any of the trains. I think -- I don't know if I can find my way back, but I remember some of the stores I passed. Everything was so bright. It felt like everyone I passed would be able to smell it on me, because it felt like everything was just blood and gunpowder and--"
"Akira," Goro says, very deliberately, and the usage of Akira's first name makes his head snap up, stop himself from where he'd been starting to press his fingers across the opposite hand, pushing like there was still blood on them that he could get off. Akira's gaze is wide and open, and he shakes with tension before he blinks.
Akira seems almost surprised that he's crying. He reaches up to touch his eyes, and stares at the damp spot the tears leave behind on his fingers before he scrubs at his face with the arm that has the fewest bandages on it.
"I know a few places that fit that description," Goro says. "Look over them with me."
Akira nods, and Goro steps over to stand closer to Akira. Akira moves even closer, still on his chair, turning until his legs are braced against Goro's. He's looking at the screen at an awkward angle, and his grip on the chair is white-knuckled, but he hasn't thrown up, so… progress.
"Here," Goro says, and starts to go through the options of places that fit "abandoned offices you'd leave a body in". He knows of three, off the top of his head, because he'd been involved in two of the murders of the people who owned the companies in question.
Akira recognizes the third one. Goro can tell because instead of intoning a negative answer, Akira hisses in a breath and then doubles over, gagging faintly. There's nothing left in his stomach to throw up, it seems, so he simply dry heaves for a few moments, shaking. Goro takes the opportunity to send the location and Akira's assumed path to Futaba. She'll figure out the rest.
Goro steps away to plug his phone in, wearily watching his phone inform him that his alarm is set for three and a half hours from now.
Akira doesn't look up when Goro approaches.
"I think I drooled on your floor," Akira says, apologetically, his voice thick from where he's doubled over.
Goro throws a paper towel down, and Akira reaches out, tugging it into the wet spot and watching it absorb the moisture.
"You need some rest," Goro says. He reaches down to put his hand on Akira's shoulder and feels unnecessarily self-conscious about it. He'd done this as Crow, but it's different now.
He doesn't care to investigate that.
"Yeah," Akira agrees. He doesn't move for a long moment, but he finally gets to his feet. He wavers a little, and Goro keeps his hand where it is.
Goro leads him to the bedroom. It's only slightly more lived in than anywhere else in the condo, really, but it has several thick blankets and high quality pillows, because Goro can't afford to wake up with a crick in his neck. Akira gets in bed almost automatically, and Goro feels so out of place that he can barely follow his own actions as he pulls the blankets up to drop over Akira.
Akira reaches out. Catches Goro's sleeve.
"Where are you sleeping?" Akira asks.
"The couch," Goro says, although sleeping feels like a generous term for how he'll be spending the small amount of time he has before he wakes up.
Akira is quiet for a long moment. He looks away from Goro and fixates on a stray thread on Goro's oldest blanket, dragging his finger over it a few times. Then he tugs on Goro's sleeve, just lightly enough to be felt.
Goro has never been needed, before. Goro doesn't even think he's been wanted by anyone -- not honestly, not as himself. He wasn't enough for his mother to stick around; he wasn't kept by any of his foster families. His life is a long string of people he's ruined simply by being in close proximity to them, and the only people that escape unscathed are the ones who only ever see his surface smiles and accept them as the truth.
Akira knows better. Akira knows him, now. He may not know all of Goro's anger; he may not have seen him fully unleashed, but he knows his secrets, now. Goro is laid bare by the situation, by necessity, allowing himself to be perceived and understood.
Akira came to him because he's a murderer. Akira needed an accomplice. Akira needed someone who could help him.
Goro can't let Akira's martyrdom ruin him after all this.
Goro tugs his sleeve away.
"I'll see you in the morning," Goro says. "We'll figure out what we're doing then."
Akira inhales a breath, shaky and wet, and Goro lays down on the couch and tries to pretend he can't hear the jerking intakes of breath that signal that Akira hasn't fallen asleep. They even out, eventually. Akira goes silent, too exhausted for even his own misery to keep him awake.
Goro never manages to sleep.