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Goro can't sleep.
His skin is still tingling, every millimeter of flesh buzzing with awareness: of the air density, of the scrape of his cotton shirt and pants against his epidermis, of the tiny shocks of static electricity that follow. A carbonation that's been fizzing through him since that sliver of seconds before he entered the Metaverse earlier, a gaggle of misfit, noxiously idealistic teenagers arrayed around him in a mismatched splatter of colors, their silhouettes all dark shadows against the pulsing-blinding-bright-white of the labyrinth nestled safely within a madman's mind.
The Metaverse hasn't thrilled him since those first few ventures when he still had spots of acne that broke out on his forehead, too young and stupid to know what he was getting into. Back then Loki was a burning presence in his mind, a rush of energy that boiled his sinew and ignited his nerves. A jagged figure, a saw-blade, knife-edge figure, a creature sin-marked and unrepentant and damned, the perfect ugly manifestation of the perfectly ugly rage in Goro's soul. He learned how to have fun with Loki, for a little while at least--until that rancid piece of shit of a father put a gun in Goro's hand and showed him how to pull the trigger.
Not entirely true. He did have fun in those handful of weeks slipping through the shadows of Sae's palace, taking every rigged game and rigging it against its dealer. He was still acting, of course, still playing a role, a prince in honest white and august gold who let only truths fall from his lips. But it was one in which he could act out a little, could slice a little and dice a little. The tight blue light of his saber could slice through a dream of a monster and it was only that: a dream; he could level the little pistol, gleaming and gold and harmless, and pull the trigger, and it was satisfying watching the shadows melt away and knowing he wouldn't have to watch the news in the morning to learn what the outcome would be.
No bodies to look for until the twentieth of November.
Goro grits his teeth and grabs for his pillow, rolling onto his back and shoving it under his head. He can't sleep, body too flooded with adrenaline and mind too full of brainless, sentimental thought. He could go back to the Metaverse and let loose, really let loose, call on Loki to break his chains and let the bodies fly. There's a certain appeal to the thought in the way one considers a kitchen knife and all of its broad applications: intrusive, nauseating, unwanted, but fascinating all the same. The same way a traffic accident is fascinating: you can't help gaping in horrified awe at the spectacle and the promise of mangled corpses lying out on the open roadway.
His shirt is riding up his stomach. Goro runs cold fingertips along the cinched waistband of his jersey pants and the exposed skin above it and shivers. He presses his fingers into the soft flesh of his belly and slides down, dipping beneath the line of his pants and past his his briefs until he brushes against the wiry hair between his legs and shivers. He hasn't done anything like this since--when? It's been a while. It's been--years. He's had no inclination and other things to occupy him besides, but maybe if he works out the last of his adrenaline he can fall into the welcome oblivion of sleep.
Goro curls a hand around his hardening length and hisses. He's too sensitive, his body unused to the feeling after being so long ignored. He strokes himself unsurely but it's been too long since he did this and he can't find any kind of rhythm. What did the lonely and miserable child he thought he'd left behind do when he wanted to simulate some semblance of comfort?
Ah--simulate. That was it. Close his eyes and fill the blanks in with his imagination. So Goro does just that: closes his eyes, curls his hand around his cock, and tries to picture it's someone else's hand on him. His own hand is calloused, so he pictures his shadowy partner with calloused hands--from holding a gun? No--he shudders--a blade. Goro drags his hand down his length and then back to the tip, where he's already leaking precum. He runs his palm his over the head, wiping the precum on his palm and spreading it so that when he wraps his hand back around his cock his next stroke glides more smoothly, letting him pick up the pace.
His partner tightens his long, thin fingers around the base of Goro's shaft and squeezes; Goro thrusts into the grip involuntarily, feeling the hot drag of friction from skin on skin, and bites his lip to stifle a moan. Another stroke, surer this time, more confident, the faintest brush of a nail under his foreskin; Goro gasps for air.
The smell of instant coffee percolates through his senses. Through the haze he's dimly aware that he put a pot on before he left for Odaiba for a quick burst of energy, and the timer still hasn't kicked off. But the smell, though cheap and half-burnt, winds its way through the fog of arousal that's starting to settle over his brain until it becomes something richer, fuller, more inviting. It takes on a life of its own, coiling through the air and settling in his pores, enveloping him and surrounding him. His hand--his partner's hand, he reminds himself, his shadow-partners hand--moves again in another upward stroke. The way the fingers curl around his cock is inexpert but that's an irrelevant detail because in this mental exercise his partner would curl his pianist's fingers, strong but deceptively delicate-looking, as expertly around Goro's length as he would around the hilt of a knife.
Goro inches his other hand, his partner's free hand, up his chest and beneath the thin cotton of his shirt, trailing goosebumps in its wake until his fingertips brush over the puckered skin of his left areola. Goro takes a shuddering breath before his partner's fingers close around his nipple and squeeze. This would be the moment Goro would reach up and tighten his fingers in his partner's curly dark hair and tug him down so he can bring to bear mouth and tongue and teeth. Instead Goro contents himself with a tight pinch of fingers and the sharp bright brick of prick of nails.
The hand on him moves now with greater urgency, pulling Goro to buck his hips upward with each sure stroke of his shadowy partner's hands. Goro squeezes his eyes shut, the hand squeezing tighter, and swallows a whine around his tongue. Behind his eyelids he can make out the shape of a body above him, phantom curls brushing his cheek, and this is where a mouth would fix now insistently on the flash of pale skin of Goro's throat to suck a mark into his skin that no high-collared shirt could over, and the hand on his length drags upwards again, squeezing around the tip and brushing his thumbnail along the sensitive underside, and Goro sees a flash of steel-grey irises reflecting bursts of starlight in the night sky behind his eyelids and Goro gasps, "Akira--" as he comes, for the first time in years, into the solitary hold of his own hand.
He can almost hear, beyond the crash of blood pouring through his veins, the sound of Akira saying his own name.
"Goro."
The aftershocks pass and leave emptiness in their wake, which soon turns into disgust, which turns into self-loathing, which turns into the vile rancor of heartache. Goro rests his left hand over his eyes and laughs at himself, quiet and cynical.
What the fuck is he doing?
In two weeks, Goro Akechi will die. In two weeks Maruki's hold over reality will shatter and his cotton candy fantasy land will evaporate, come hell or high water, even if Goro has to put a bullet in the bastard's head to do it--and Goro will disappear too, sublimating from physical reality to the ether, or hell, or whatever comes after. Goro is dead and he has two weeks to make sure he stays that way.
So what the fuck is he doing?
The scent of half-burnt instant coffee still wafts faintly through the air. His muscles are loose from the tranquilizer effect of orgasm, and he curls onto his side and pulls the blanket over his head to block the smell out.
What the fuck is he doing?
He knows exactly what he's doing.
He's doing the same thing he does every time his phone vibrates with a notification and he swipes it open to find a text from Akira inviting him to play billiards, to play darts, to spend a quiet evening at the Jazz Jin and unwind against the backdrop of gently competing melodies. Like a disaffected child flicking the catch on a lighter and running his open palm over the dancing flame. He can see the way Akira looks at him, soft and calculating, something expectant in his gaze. Something that wants to ask for an indulgence. Akira even asked to meet him at the church in Kanda once to pray in the confessional. What a good, unrepentant Catholic to pay for his sins before committing them.
When he closes his eyes he can't help but picture what would happen if he took the hand that keeps trying to feed him and held it rather than biting it. What if he chose to ignore the faint needle-wires he can practically feel tugging at his limbs, urging him to dance a certain way? What kind of future could he have before him, one where he could grasp at happiness, however empty that happiness might be?
But what ifs are meaningless. His path is his own now and he's been chained down long enough. In two weeks Goro will die.
He closes his eyes and falls asleep and dreams of a sky full of stars.