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That’s it, then. Goro is dead.
He had his suspicions. He’s not an idiot. All the odds were against him in that fucking room, too many missing memories of his so-called escape and of all the days thereafter, and not to mention Christmas Eve.
That was the most obvious clue, in hindsight. The way he’d woken up almost from nothing that day, as if he were a doll just springing to life. The way the threads of his soulbond carried him forward—puppeteering him along to the one person he swore he never wanted to see again. And, of course, the way he’d opened his fucking mouth and blabbered on about repaying his debts or whatever he’d said.
Goro knows himself too well to blame that part entirely on Maruki.
So he returns to the quiet of his apartment alone, drained and weary from a day in that madman’s Palace, the abduction of Yoshizawa Sumire. He slips off his shoes, his gloves, hangs up his jacket. Pads his way over to his futon and sits. Puts his head in his hands.
Fuck, he thinks.
How is he supposed to continue like this? How is he supposed to be useful? He’s a walking liability. A ticking time bomb. A weapon ready and waiting for someone else ready to pull his trigger, again.
His body feels like his. His mind feels like his. His soulbond calls out to him as it always does, waiting ever-patient against the beat of his heart.
But it can’t be his, can it?
“Fuck,” he says.
It’s silly to feel scared. If the world were as it should be… well, he wouldn’t be feeling anything at all. It’s silly to feel scared when he’s had death and emptiness before and he knows all his future holds is more of that very same nothing—those blank gaps in his memory, with no one to wake him ever again.
Nothing. Forever.
So maybe that’s why tonight he finally gives in.
On the night of January 2nd, Akechi Goro lies down in his bed. It’s quiet, like it always is. Cold, like it always is. He thinks of his mother. Her misbegotten one-sided bond, the poor choice she made, and the dream she never dreamt.
She thought it was a sign. She thought it was him who would die, his future stolen away. She thought her time with that bastard was all the more precious for it. Ten years is a long time—she couldn’t have known then that it was her own future which would be taken from her, that her death was her own doing.
But Goro knows.
Goro is dead. He was dead a week ago, he’s dead now, he’ll be dead ten years in the future. He has no future.
He curls on his side, closes his eyes. A thousand hours spent chatting, flirting, fighting, watching flash through his line like a film reel. Ren flushing and twisting his fingers into his frizzy hair. Ren slashing forward at Goro, the furious light in his eyes as bright as the shining silver of his dagger. Ren in an aquarium gift shop, shoving a stuffed otter at him because he said it looked like Goro.
He wonders if Ren is bonded to him, too.
“Amamiya Ren,” Goro murmurs to himself, to the quiet of his room. He takes the immaterial threads of his bond in hand and chooses. Chooses the only true match he’s ever known, his one weakness, one last fleeting balm to see him through his final mission and the end of all things.
His new bond pulses in return—once, twice, three times. A slow, steady heartbeat coming to life, nestled beside his own.
And Goro sleeps, confident that, just like his mother before him, he’ll dream no dream of the future tonight.
The first thing Ren sees when he wakes up is a pair of maroon eyes.
Definitely creepy, in a cute kind of way, but not anything unusual. If it’s not maroon eyes brazenly watching him sleep then it’s soft blond eyelashes, matted chestnut hair, wide freckled shoulders, and on one notable occasion a very nice butt. Ren is a lucky guy.
He closes his eyes again to shut out the sunlight streaming so rudely into his and Goro’s bedroom, yawns very dramatically, and propels himself forward with practiced, catlike speed to snatch his husband right around the middle.
Goro yelps and wiggles. To no avail, the fool. There is no escape.
“G’morning, you creep,” Ren chuckles, muffled into Goro’s bare chest, holds him tighter because he’s warm and soft and pretty and comfy and today is Ren’s day off. The relentless beat against his cheek is an exact match for the one beside his own heart, pulsing steadily away since he made his choice over ten years ago.
Still beating—but a little fast. And Goro is awfully quiet otherwise. Ren peers up, finds wide eyes again, maroon now nearly completely overtaken by black pupils.
“Hi,” Ren prompts.
Goro blinks. Says “R—“ and stops, coughs. Says again: “Ren?”
“Goro,” Ren responds in turn.
He’s adorable. Ren adores him. His fluffy bed hair and the side of his face all imprinted with red streaks from his pillow. The pajama bottoms that are—from what Ren can tell from how he’s haphazardly draped across Goro—riding a bit low. The wedding ring he never takes off. And his… his just constant, almost bewildered staring.
“You’re quiet.” Ren nuzzles into Goro’s chest, stretches up to plant a soft kiss against the base of his neck. “Something up?”
Goro shakes his head quickly. Averts his eyes.
Well, fine. He’ll spill eventually—one of the best things about Akechi Goro is he can never keep his mouth shut for long. “Well,” Ren says, “since today is my day off I was thinking we could do Fancy Breakfast. Do you want me to make anything in particular? I think we have a bunch of stuff in the fridge.”
Goro shifts his legs a bit, hovers a hand above Ren’s back like he can’t figure out where to put it before deciding, to Ren’s disappointment, to place it on the pillow beside him. “Whatever you want.”
“Really?” Ren sits up on his elbows, splays a hand across Goro’s chest and taps his fingers against his ribs. “You want a repeat of the omelette fiasco of 2025?”
Goro somehow manages to look even farther away from Ren than before, as he forces out the most pathetically nervous little laugh Ren has ever heard.
Alright, time to figure this out.
Nervous laughter. Averting his eyes. Hm. Not really paying attention to what Ren is saying… keeps swallowing, breathing kind of heavy, his heart is certainly racing… so, either his 28 year-old husband is in the middle of a heart attack or—Ren moves his leg across Goro’s hip and—
“Aha!” A dastardly smirk crawls across Ren’s face as he announces, “Something is up.”
“Wh—I, uh—”
“Hey.” Ren grants him mercy, interrupts his uncharacteristic stuttering. “Were you dreaming about me?” he says, flutters his eyelashes too fast and too much (but Goro likes that).
Despite Goro’s feeble attempts to hide, Ren can clearly see the blush rising higher in his cheeks. “I always dream about you.”
“Flatterer.” Ren licks his palm, slips a hand under the blanket, teases the waistband of Goro’s pajama bottoms. What the hell, he’s feeling generous. “Do you want some help with that?”
Goro still won’t look at him but pauses only a moment before he nods, fervently.
So Ren graciously obliges.
No lead up, no teasing, Goro’s certainly worked up enough already—must have been some dream. “C’mon, you know I love to hear your voice,” Ren murmurs after a quiet few strokes. On cue a tiny whimper escapes through Goro’s gritted teeth, and he lets go of whatever was holding him back to buck up into the tight circle of Ren’s hand. “That’s it, that’s good.”
The rest carries on as it usually does—there’s some moaning of Ren’s name, some thrashing, a surprisingly impassioned “Oh god—!” for what’s really just a standard handjob—though Ren will take the compliment—before Goro finishes with a cute little gasp. Nice.
Ren reaches across Goro’s heaving chest and grabs some tissues from his nightstand. “I’ll go get started on that breakfast,” he says as he cleans them up. “Brush your teeth so I can kiss you.”
There’s a shirt on the floor beside their bed that passes the sniff test so Ren throws that on and pads his way out of the room in a very good mood. After one last look at his satisfied Goro, still melted against the mattress, of course.
So! Fancy Breakfast time.
Ren shuffles around the kitchen, looks through the cabinets, the pantry, the fridge. Fancy Breakfast means smoothies, means yogurt, definitely means bacon. No omelettes, never again. Waffles with strawberries could be good, if he feels like getting out the waffle maker which… he does.
Ren has most of what he needs for an improvised meal which really isn’t all that different from any other day—the only true meaning of Fancy Breakfast is no rush, no work, and a meal enjoyed together.
Which is why it’s kind of annoying that it’s taking Goro so damn long to join him.
That little handjob didn’t kill him—Ren can hear him wandering around the apartment while he cooks. Pacing between the bedroom and the bathroom. Messing with god knows what. Knocking something over in the hallway? Turning on the television? The heart beating next to Ren’s is still racing.
“Goro?” he calls out. Ren is getting a little worried now—if Goro’s been quiet and avoidant and keyed up for this long then there might really be a problem, and Ren would rather know what it is sooner than later. “Goro? Breakfast is almost ready, are you eating?”
A few moments later Ren’s husband slides into the kitchen like a shadow. Crosses his arms, his legs, leans against the far counter and stares intensely, again, without a word. Something about his stance almost reminds Ren of Crow, from oh-so long ago. Ten years, two centimeters, and approximately eight thousand different hairstyles later, here he is just the same.
“What do you want in your smoothie? I’ve got blueberries, raspberries, some strawberries left over from the waffles—”
“Ren,” Goro says abruptly. Once he has Ren’s attention he looks down at the floor, then back up under his eyelashes. Perfectly demure, like an innocent maiden in a regency film. Then he demands, like Akechi Goro: “Kiss me.”
Ren’s jaw snaps shut with a click. Well then. Screw breakfast. He drops his spoon, saunters over without another thought. Crowds Goro up against the counter and does exactly what he was asked.
Goro seems content to sit back and let Ren do whatever he wants which is a bit of a theme for today, but that’s alright. The little flutter in Ren’s soulbond, a delightful skip in Goro’s heartbeat, is more than enough for him. That is, until three things happen in very quick succession.
One: a hand wraps around Ren’s neck. Good.
Two: Goro slams him backward, knocks the back of his head against the refrigerator and all of his breath out too… and stops kissing him. Not quite as good.
Three: a knife appears in Goro’s hand, then at Ren’s throat. Hm. Good?
“Uh?” Ren says while he blinks the stars out of his eyes.
“What the hell have you done?” Goro hisses. His eyes are wide, spit flying from his mouth—furious, feral in a way Ren hasn’t seen since the first time he asked Goro to marry him which means this knife at his throat is very much not for fun.
“Goro—”
“What the hell have you done!” Goro says again, raising his voice to a shout. “You took the deal?”
“The deal?” Ren wracks his brains for any deal—for anything at all that could make Goro this upset. Comes up empty. “What—”
“Maruki’s deal!”
What the hell—? “Maruki? Maruki… Takuto?” Ren asks, tries to put a little space between his neck and his kitchen knife, the nice one Goro got him for Christmas like, a week ago. Goro doesn’t let him.
“You thought you could have your perfect fucking reality, keep me like a pet—”
“Wh-what the hell are you talking about?”
“Do you not even remember?” Goro asks, his voice hitching up at the end in a way that can’t be anything other than terror. Ren’s heart twists in his chest, his traitorous eyes start to tear up in sympathy. “Did he change that for you as well?”
The shoving, the yelling, even the knife didn’t scare Ren but this does. He doesn’t know why Goro’s confused, why he doesn’t remember, but he’s seen enough horrifyingly sad movies to know it can’t be anything good. “Goro—Goro, we didn’t take the deal—what are you talking about? You were there, you know this, it was—”
It was ten years ago.
It’s January. 2027. It was exactly ten years ago.
Ren tries to keep breathing as his world turns on its head. Goro… he didn’t. He couldn’t have. And he couldn’t have kept it a secret all this time.
“Goro,” Ren says, his awed voice quiet as a whisper. “Are you… are you in a dream?”
Goro freezes. Averts his eyes.
And so, unfortunately, Ren is going to kill him. Not this Goro, though at the end of the day there isn’t that much of a difference.
Ren’s Goro, in his great wisdom and assholery, never told Ren he’d chosen to accept his soulbond. Ren assumed he decided not to so he could always be free—and Ren never pushed it, never asked, never expected—it was simply such a Goro thing to do, to refuse a soulmate. But today is January 3rd, so ten years ago…
Ten years and one day ago, Ren’s future husband joined forces with him. Fought alongside him. Realized he was most likely a dead man walking, and so decided now, now is the time to forge an unbreakable bond. Because of course he would, because Akechi Goro is exactly that kind of stupid.
Ren is maybe throwing stones at glass houses considering his own bond, but still. Ten years later, Goro still amazes him. Goro will always amaze him.
“January 2nd, 2017,” Ren grins, laughs. “Welcome to 2027. So you’re—”
Oh… holy fucking god.
“You’re—eighteen?” His voice comes out strangled and high-pitched now. “When I—? You were…?”
The knife at Ren’s neck falters as Goro’s face glows red. “Don’t change the subject.”
“Oh my god.”
The shyness, letting Ren take the lead, Goro’s entire body shuddering like it was the first time anyone had ever touched his dick because it was. Oh, it’s a damn shame that Ren spent all this time making a nice breakfast when his husband will never get to enjoy it, because Ren really is going to kill him when he comes back.
Which should be soon, shit, Goro’s been here for a while already. The soulbond dream only lasts an hour or two, at most.
He doesn’t have much time, so Ren—Ren takes the fact that Akechi Goro had his first kiss and lost his virginity here, now, and Ren didn’t even fucking know because his shitty husband didn’t warn him—he takes that and he puts it in a little box which he will open again at the first possible moment that doesn’t have him screaming at a terrified teenager.
Speaking of that terrified teenager.
“Hey, it’s okay,” Ren says. He places a tentative hand on top of the shaking one holding his knife. “I’m not mad at you, just—listen: this isn’t Maruki’s reality. You’re not being controlled by anyone—you could leave tomorrow if you wanted to. Though I’d be pretty fucked up if you did,” he tries to joke with a pitiful little laugh.
“You’re lying.”
“I can’t prove your own free will to you,” Ren sighs. He lets go of Goro’s hand, holds both of his own up and bares his neck in surrender. “You’re going to have to trust me.”
He can see the conflict on Goro’s face. The fear—obvious now after a life spent together. Those maroon eyes he adores so much flicker across Ren’s face, around the room, to the wedding band on Ren’s finger before he finally lowers the knife. (But keeps it held tightly in his grip, of course he does.)
“I’m supposed to be dead,” Goro says as he steps away, still within arms reach. “Tell me why I’m not.”
Great first question. Ren grimaces, slowly lowers his hands. “I, uh, don’t know.”
“Don’t give me that bullshit, tell me,” Goro snarls.
“It’s the truth,” Ren shrugs. “Sorry.”
Goro flips Ren’s knife around in his grip, flourishes it in a way he probably thinks is very impressive. “Need I remind you I’m armed?”
“Yeah, but you won’t hurt me. And even if you do I’ll enjoy it. That’s a freebie by the way, have fun with that.”
Goro flushes again. He chucks the knife on the counter behind him, crosses his arms over his chest and pouts—though Ren’s husband would insist that his pouts are in fact very respectable scowls.
Ren heaves out a sigh. “If you want anything else out of me you’d better hurry. You don’t have much time left here.”
“Why am I alive?”
“I told you—”
“Fine!” Goro snaps. “Be fucking useless, then. When will the dream happen for you—or, my version of you? You can tell me that, can’t you?” Insecurity masked with all the skill of a nervous teenager shines when Goro asks, “You… did choose to bond with me too?”
“Already happened.”
His brows knit together, that “scowl” returns—he’s pissed in a way only Akechi Goro could be, beaten to a soulbond which he chooses to keep a secret anyway. “What? When?”
“December 10th.”
Goro rocks forward—involuntarily it looks like. Losing his grip on the dream. “December 10th?” he repeats, shakes his head. “You… you’re a fool.”
Yeah. He is.
December 10th was the night Goro died. The night Ren lay awake in bed, clutching a wrinkled glove, and chose Akechi Goro. He took the threads of his bond and held them tight, let them wrap around his heart. He prayed that when he slept he would dream of the future.
“I didn’t dream,” Ren says. “You were dead. And I don’t know how you came back—a change in fate, a miracle, soulbond bullshit, I don’t know. It doesn’t matter.”
Goro shakes his head again, pitches forward completely this time. Ren catches him, lets him slump against his shoulder. “It does matter,” Goro chokes out. “I’m dead, I’m not real. This isn’t real.”
Ren lowers them both to the floor while Goro fights to stay awake. It’s happening so fast—they could have so much more time to talk if Goro had just been honest from the start but apparently some things never change.
Desperate fingers clutch at Ren’s back, his forearm, and Ren curses his past self for being so caught up in his own problems, never seeing what Goro was going through. He holds Goro tight against him, kisses his temple.
“Don’t be scared,” Ren says quickly, before this Goro slips away. He slides a hand between them, rests it flat on Goro’s chest. He can’t feel his own heart there—only Goro can. “You’re not alone. I’m there with you, I’ll always be there.”
“Ren…” Goro murmurs, his head drooping, eyes closing.
“Goro—”
“…Trust me.”
Goro wakes up.
On the morning of January 3rd, for a second time.
It’s quiet and cold. There are no tall windows with winter sunlight streaming through them. No fluffy comforter, no shelves full of knick-knacks, no ring on his hand. No Amamiya Ren beside him.
Trust me.
That Ren’s life was perfect. His apartment was so full of warmth and life, like that dusty old attic of his exploded and covered everything it could touch. There were pictures of him and Goro everywhere—the two of them smiling, Goro rolling his eyes, Ren giving him bunny ears. There was even a picture of Goro and Sakamoto which… ugh.
Ren was beautiful. Annoyingly kind and patient. Great mouth. Better hands. Goro looked like his fucking father with hair.
He rolls onto his back. Presses a hand to his heart. Closes his eyes.
Thum-thump, thum-thump.
Thum-thump, thum-thump.
Goro might not be real, might not be alive, but Ren is. One of the hearts inside him is. He’s not sure if that will be enough, but… he doesn’t feel afraid anymore.
“Fine,” Goro says to his heart. “I’ll trust you.”