#thank god i dont have photoshop i would be even worse im so sorry for this

[jonah-cartwright]

*insert the shitty recorder version of my heart will go on*

[akechicrimes]

7 or 71 for either shuake or yukamitsu [big eye emojis]

7. “I told you that I’d never leave you; I’m not going anywhere.”

On Goro’s thirty-fourth birthday at ten-thirty in the morning, Akira calls him at work and says, “Happy birthday, dear. I just got hit by a car, and I need to know what color bike you want.”

*

On Goro’s thirty-fourth birthday at ten-thirty in the morning, Akira calls him at work (which Goro dubiously eyeballs for a whole four seconds before picking up) and says, “Happy birthday, dear. I just got hit by a car, and I need to know what color bike you want.”

Well, neither Goro nor Akira own a car for Akira to drive, so that means Akira got hit on foot. Goro is very calm, and has no immediate panic response to that, because he’s a rational and responsible adult. “Are you dead?” Goro asks.

“Probably not.”

“And is there a reason you’re calling me instead of the ambulance?”

“Oh, I’m fine. I think I have a bruise on one of my legs, if that counts. But I was riding your bike when it happened, so the bike got totaled, so, you know. They’ve got the same model you had, but there’s tons of new colors, if you want pictures.”

Goro takes a very long, very deep breath. Goro is very, extremely calm. “Anything is fine,” he says. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

“Yeah, hundred percent. I even landed on my feet; you should’ve seen it.”

“You should go to the ER anyway,” says Goro, in a voice that is truly the epitome of calm.

“I mean, I guess I could, but that seems like a waste of time. And I don’t want to just leave your bike in the middle of the road.”

“Throw it away if it’s wrecked, then.”

“But it deserves a proper send-off.”

“You’re doing this to me on my birthday, Kurusu.”

“I’ll go to the ER if you go with me,” says Akira hopefully, who is a perennially bad influence who is of the opinion that Goro should have just said he’d be ‘working from home’ and spent the day with him.

Goro takes a look at his calendar, tallies up how many meeting he’d have to reschedule, and waits a whole five seconds before he lets himself say, “Fine,” because Akira just said that he’s fine and Goro isn’t upset and everything is so calm that Goro can wait five seconds before agreeing to leave work. “I’ll see you at Leblanc.”

“Wait, wait, which color for the bike? They’ve got green, blue, a red, a kind of fun rose-gold thing, which is a bit excessive considering it’s a bike, and teal, and a kind of blue and orange Naruto-y thing…”

“Anything is fine.” Goro stops. “Except the last one.”

“Red it is! See you in a bit.”

“Don’t ride that bike back to Leblanc,” says Goro, as if lightning might strike twice on the same day on the same man riding the same model bike of the same color, but Akira’s already hung up. Goro speed-drafts a rescheduling email, copy-pastes it to four different people, and then sprints out the office door without even a goodbye to his coworkers.

*

Friday, 11:16 AM

FUTABA: hey

FUTABA: hey goro

FUTABA: hey gorororororororororo

FUTABA: HEY MR AKECHI KURUSU

GORO: If it’s about the traffic accident, I heard about it.

GORO: I’m going back to Leblanc now.

FUTABA: no it’s smthg else

FUTABA: well it is about the accident but i got smthg else for u

FUTABA sent MOV19.mp4

FUTABA: ripped this from the traffic cam

GORO: Is this footage of the accident?

FUTABA: yeehaw

GORO: …Thank you for the offer, but I don’t know if I want to see this.

FUTABA: ok i hear u but i promise it’s hilarious

FUTABA: and also u might feel better if u see it

FUTABA: like idk what he told u on the phone but like

FUTABA: look the car even slowed down at the intersection

FUTABA: the dude was obeying traffic laws and everything he was doing something like ten under the speed limit

FUTABA: the car ENTIRELY missed akira

FUTABA: got the bike full on

FUTABA: and then he just rolls up across the hood and up the windshield like a looney toon

FUTABA: rip ur bike tho it just goes cronch

FUTABA: instant pretzel

FUTABA: ty bichael for ur sacrifice

FUTABA: also idk i figured you

FUTABA: might wanna see for urself that he’s okay

FUTABA: like u can see him stand up at the end and he’s not even confused or anything he’s super duper ok

FUTABA: he’s not bullshitting u over the phone and pretending he’s ok when he’s not ok

FUTABA: u know how he does lmao

GORO: …Huh.

GORO: He really did land on his feet for a whole second there, didn’t he?

FUTABA: yeah like a cat

FUTABA: it’s nuts tbh

FUTABA: and then he remembers he’s a human and falls on his ass LMAO

FUTABA: show it to morgana i want his professional kitty cat opinion on the matter

FUTABA: rate akira’s near death experience

FUTABA: also the driver was v nice and v apologetic and he gave akira his insurance

FUTABA: but i have his home address and work address and phone number and the name of his dog if you want it

GORO: Just the insurance will be fine.

FUTABA: kk

GORO: …And thanks for sending the video.

GORO: Even though I already knew he was fine.

FUTABA: you know those like

FUTABA: itty bitty teeny weeny micro dogs

FUTABA: that are like four and a half pounds

FUTABA: but they think they can take any mfer on the block out of sheer will alone

FUTABA: and theyve always got their eyeballs bulging out and they pick fights with 70 pound dogs

FUTABA: and they have only two emotions which are rage and anxiety and they shake constantly because theyre only four pounds and they have So Much Emotion and nowhere to put it so they vibrate at the speed of sound

GORO: Is this a metaphor about me.

FUTABA: it’s a metaphor about you

FUTABA: because i can hear your shaky angry anxious four pound vibrating all the way from the other side of tokyo

GORO: You are the smallest, angriest, most anxious person I know, who regularly picks fights with international hacking organizations and billion-dollar companies.

GORO: And I, somehow, am the angry shaky dog.

FUTABA: your husband got hit by a car on ur birthday

GORO: I know that.

GORO: I do not need to be reminded.

FUTABA: ah yeah

FUTABA: sorry

GORO: He’s fine.

GORO: He said he’s fine.

GORO: And from this footage, he’s more than fine.

FUTABA: he is super double extra fine with a side of fine

GORO: Unless this footage was in any way edited.

GORO: And unless he was faking his call, somehow.

GORO: In which case, I’m going to walk into Leblanc and find out that he was just pretending to be okay so he could hear my voice one last time and Leblanc will be swarming with police officers to break the news the newly bereaved.

GORO: But that’s not going to happen.

GORO: Because Akira is fine, and I’m perfectly fine.

FUTABA: im rly glad to hear my man

GORO: This footage isn’t edited, is it.

FUTABA: no

GORO: Are you very sure?

GORO: Videos are easily modified.

GORO: Would you even know if it was edited?

FUTABA: yes im a literal wizard of course i would know

FUTABA: where are u even getting this idea from

GORO: The entire series of events is unrealistic, isn’t it?

GORO: You said yourself that it was almost like something out of a cartoon.

GORO: The likelihood that someone gets hit by a car and comes out of it entirely no worse for wear is practically ridiculous.

FUTABA: i ripped that film straight from the cam it is entirely unedited

GORO: But how can you be sure? Did you see him in live camera?

FUTABA: i mean no but he texted me

GORO: What if that was his dying text.

FUTABA: i rly dont know if his dying text would have been the “i lived bitch” meme with the cat filter

FUTABA: he’s fine dude

FUTABA: that’s why i sent you the video

GORO: I KNOW he’s fine.

GORO: I’m asking if there’s any solid evidence.

FUTABA: THE VIDEO

GORO: I’m going to call him. Brb

FUTABA: so what he can tell you he’s fine AGAIN and you’ll be like

FUTABA: “oh but what if it was secretly a pod person who stole his body after he died tragically after calling me one last time to hear my voice”

FUTABA: he is FINE

FUTABA: like go ahead and call him if u want but

FUTABA: the only person who was gonna edit that footage was me

FUTABA: and if he were dead i would not be functioning enough to be doing any kinda photoshop like that

FUTABA: let alone LIE to you jesus christ!!!!!

FUTABA: god

FUTABA: i pronounce you King Shaky Dog

FUTABA: the tiniest and angriest and shakiest and most anxious four pound goblin

FUTABA: i will reclaim my title tomorrow

FUTABA: for now it’s my birthday gift to you

FUTABA: the title of Shaky Dog allows you to go absolutely apeshit and nobody will judge you

GORO: You know I hate birthday presents.

FUTABA: did you call akira

GORO: I hate birthday presents so much that I will be refusing my title as King Shaky Dog and will henceforth not be going ape shit.

FUTABA: ok so

FUTABA: i didnt mean to

FUTABA: get snippy with you or anything

GORO: It’s fine.

GORO: I wasn’t… exactly polite, myself.

GORO: So.

FUTABA: um

FUTABA: you really can call him if you want

FUTABA: there’s nothing wrong with that

FUTABA: between u and me……………………. i definitely did that more than once for a lot lesser reasons than someone getting hit by a car

GORO: My stop is in less than thirty seconds.

GORO: I will probably live.

FUTABA: lmao ok well

FUTABA: if u change ur mind about losing ur shit then please know i gave u that footage in the first place because i think if something like that happened to MY partner i would mcfreakin lose it

FUTABA: speaking of her

FUTABA: sumi says happy birth btw

FUTABA: but cuter because u know how she is

FUTABA: “happy birthday crow-senpai~~~~~~~~” in her shy voice that makes u wanna die

FUTABA: ofoogofhghhfoghfhhghfh g gh SUMI ur so cute ilysm

GORO: Tell her I said thanks.

GORO: And stop telling me how much you love her and use the ring you made me go ring shopping with you for.

FUTABA: HHHHH

FUTABA: im being cyberbullied for being a cowardly lesbian

GORO: I’m at my stop, by the way, so I’m going offline.

FUTABA: which tbh i probably deserve

FUTABA: oh kk see u

FUTABA: watch the video again mr shaky dog

FUTABA: akira is fine

FUTABA: everyone is alive

FUTABA: you are one year older

FUTABA: happy birthday goro

*

The bike is totaled.

Akira isn’t the sort of person to dump a piece of trash right in front of Leblanc, but it’s hard to miss sticking out of the nearby public trash bin. The back wheel has exploded into serrated wheel-spokes and limb rubber bits that Akira’s shoved into the trash as best as he could. The body of the bike is crushed in on itself, exposing its sharp hollow innards; the handlebars resemble a badly-tied knot. The front wheel is left to stick up and out, creaking gently, spinning overhead from half a hinge like a head not quite fully severed.

The cafe is empty except for its usual barista who, of course, is a very normal and mild-mannered barista, who has nothing to do with the several hundred millions worth of dollars of repatriated art hiding in the attic en route back to South Korea. That would be illegal, of course, and Akira Kurusu-Akechi has never once in his life done anything illegal in the name of what’s morally right. “Welcome back, dear,” says Akira, and hangs up a coffee mug to dry, and it’s so normal that Goro is convinced that either he’s experiencing yesterday, or maybe he’s re-experiencing the year 2016 all over again, or maybe Akira really is dead and this is just his ghost.

Goro sits in his usual spot at the bar. Same chair, sixteen years later. Unbelievable. Maybe Goro’s giving him a little bit of a dumbfounded look, because Akira tilts his head, leans across the bar, and pecks Goro on the cheek.

“Where’s Sakura?” Goro asks.

“Having his midday old man nap. So,” says Akira, looking pleased with himself, “either we can close Leblanc for an hour and raid the kitchen and make lunch, or we can close Leblanc and go out and have a fancy lunch. Your choice because I already made dinner reservations and we’re doing those no matter what.”

Goro really means to give him an answer, because Akira really does love Goro’s birthday every year and never fails to pick someplace nice for the day, but instead what comes out of his mouth is: “Did you ride the new bike back home?”

“Yeah, I did. Figured I might as well take it for a test drive. It’s a good bike.”

“Why didn’t you take the subway?” Goro says sharply.

“Didn’t have my card.”

“You just rode the bike all the way across Tokyo?”

“It wasn’t all the way across Tokyo, just a bit away and back… Goro?”

Ah, Goro’s going to become one of those people who has a meltdown any time their loved one gets on a plane or a train or ksomething else associated with heebie-jeebie nonsense magical thinking. Great. Fantastic. God dammit.

“Do you really want me to go to the ER?” Akira asks eventually.

Goro really wants Akira to have never gotten hit in the first place, but people don’t get what they want and sometimes the universe decides to send one bad fucking driver through a red light and take away Akira’s entire life in a split second—one mistake, a coincidence at the wrong place and time, and the boy who fought God and won is a smear of bones on the pavement.

This would be different if it were sixteen years ago, and Goro had the power to bend people’s minds in half until they broke, or dive into the deepest, bloodiest parts of the collective psyche and pummel the worst of them to a pulp—but what’s he going to do here? Lambast a guy who was going ten miles under the speed limit and just wasn’t looking the right way? Is he going to summon a new Persona from his soul and undo time itself?

Can he do anything if the universe decides, one day, that Akira’s time on this earth is up? He spent all those years desperate for power, and then abusing that power, and then desperately guilty for having abused that power, and then desperately trying to get up that power, and now here he is with the power to do jack shit when his husband almost gets run over and if the Metaverse were still around he swears he would have carved Loki from his own soul out of sheer fury alone—

“No,” says Goro sharply, and stands up. “It’s nothing. I’m not hungry, and I’m going for a walk. Please don’t text me unless it’s an emergency.”

“What—hey! Goro, wait, wait—”

“I’m getting some fresh air!”

Akira’s scrambling to get out from behind the bar. “Didn’t you just get here—?”

Goro spins around and points a finger at Akira like it’s his fault: “You were the one,” he snarls, “who promised, when we got married, that we’d always be together. And now you get hit on a bike, and then stand up like it’s nothing and—and get on another bike and go cycling around the exact same streets where you got hit—? Aren’t you scared? Are you trying to get yourself killed?”

Akira falls silent. “I didn’t go back to the same intersection,” he says at last.

Goro can’t take this. “I’m taking a walk.”

“Wait wait wait, Goro, just—” Akira grabs Goro’s hand and Goro has the sudden urge to yank his arm away, but Akira’s hand is also incredibly real, just like it felt this morning and yesterday and the day before that and all the days Goro ever took Akira’s living, breathing body for granted. “I didn’t think it was a big deal. He was going, I dunno, twenty miles per hour at most. It was an intersection. He’d slowed down beforehand and everything, and I didn’t even get hurt on the fall.”

Right, because Goro’s the one who’s just freaking out for no reason. Right. Okay. Because that’s how he is, isn’t he, always being dramatic over little things. Right. Of course. This is fine.

When Goro doesn’t turn around, Akira moves around to the front to look him in the eye. “Sorry if I made you worry,” says Akira. “But it was really nothing at all.”

“Maybe it was nothing this time,” says Goro forcefully. “But what about the next time—the next car—the next time you borrow my bike? What about tomorrow? Or the day after that? Literally any one of the hundreds and hundreds of days coming up where you could easily die just as easily as you died today.”

“Then I’ll escape death hundreds and hundreds of times,” says Akira.

Goro scoffs.

“I mean it. I was a Phantom Thief, wasn’t I? I escaped death more than once. Did it again today. I’ll do it as many times as it takes until we’re both old and grey.” Akira takes Goro’s hand, but it’s Goro who laces their fingers together.

“Sometimes it doesn’t work that way,” says Goro, like a bad echo of his ten-year-old self, trying to figure out what kind of world would let his mother die.

“I’m just keeping my promise,” says Akira. “I told you that I’d never leave you. I’m not going anywhere.”

“Sometimes that’s not your decision to make.”

“It is and I’ve decided I’m immortal until you die.”

Goro scoffs. “Don’t be arrogant.”

“Is it being arrogant? I didn’t let death steal you away from me. I’m not letting it steal me away from you, either.”

“Sometimes…” Goro begins.

“'Sometimes’ what?”

'Sometimes’ what?

Sometimes things get worse. People die early, and unfulfilled; they streak through the sky in a blaze and then wink out, without even a burst of fire to show for it. Sometimes nobody gets a say in what happens, and plans don’t pan out, and wishes aren’t granted, and everything happens for no good reason and no good end.

Today, Goro Akechi-Kurusu is thirty-four years old, about sixteen years older than he ever figured he was going to be. He has a career in a non-profit for maladjusted youth getting reacclimated to school systems and preparing for college, instead of the career in law he figured he’d have if he actually lived that long. He doesn’t just have one friend, but multiple friends. He has, unbelievably, a husband, which honestly still floors him to this day, considering that he was and maybe still is convinced that marriage is a scam devised by asshole men like his father to manipulate young women into a false sense of security. The other day, Akira mentioned that he wanted to get a cat to keep Morgana company, maybe in a few years when they moved into a pet-friendly apartment, and in Goro’s head, it made sense that they would both be alive and together entire years in the future for them to get a cat.

Today is already an impossible day, isn’t it?

“Sometimes,” says Goro flatly, “you say ridiculous things, and I think that you could actually pull it off.”

Akira grins. Akira leans in for their regular greeting kiss when one of them comes home, but this time, Goro closes his eyes, leans into it, really tries to memorize the feel of Akira’s lips on his. Every line and scar on his hands, the odd ends of his fingernails, that familiar way he waits for four beats, then takes a breath through his nose and kisses Goro again, and never can quite seem to avoid kissing him more on the bottom lip than the top. “I don’t make promises I can’t keep,” he says plainly not three inches from Goro’s face. “It’s bad form to leave a calling card and never show up.”

Goro smiles. “Then I won’t let you break your word.”

When Akira pulls away, he kisses the back of Goro’s hand, like a proper gentleman thief of old. “Happy birthday, dear,” he says, and surprisingly, despite the way this awful day started off, Goro thinks that Akira might be able to pull that promise off, too.