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[lakebrat]

Hello. You've reached Goro Akechi, known as Frog. Please leave a message.

[Beep.]

[[ooc: WARNING that threads with willowandoak may contain unmarked NSFW. Tread lightly. Blame Sunflowren.]]

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[willowandoak]

Ren hums absentminded acknowledgment, absorbed in his phone for a moment, until Crow's newest messages send him into a fit of quiet laughter. He holds out his phone to show Goro the latest exchange.

[lakebrat]

Yeah, he looks at the message briefly, then falls back on the bed, dropping the pillow over his face in silent mirth.

Muffled words leak from under the pillow. "Twirling. He twirled. Is Crow's subconscious Destinyland?"

[willowandoak]

"If he does ever get a Palace, I bet that's what it'll look like." He goes back to typing. "I did a Palace once at Destinyland. Which sounds like it should be fine, right, because it didn't actually look like Destinyland, it looked like the distortion. Which was a fucking... farm or some shit, I think. Except the guy didn't pay attention to the actual rides at Destinyland, so the safe rooms were all thrill rides."

He is less distracted than he sounds, telling this, and more aware of how Goro is reacting.

[lakebrat]

And, indeed, under the pillow Goro's stopped laughing, reminded of his one abortive visit to Destinyland—with Haru and the rest.

He doesn't lift the pillow. "The safe rooms were thrill rides? Did you use them?"

At a guess, it wouldn't have been safe.

[willowandoak]

Hm. His little probe has yielded... okay results. Not great, not awful. Goro hasn't gotten mad at him for talking about his evil murder history or whatever, but he's not happy, either.

"Mostly just for quick travel. If you went in and out real fast you were probably gonna be okay."

[lakebrat]

He raises the pillow, tucking it in behind his face, watching Ren. Something odd there.

"I'm a bit surprised you even knew about the safe rooms. Though I suppose, if Morgana hadn't pointed them out, I'd still have figured them out eventually."

[willowandoak]

He shoots Goro a brief look. "That says more about you than me, dude."

[lakebrat]

"Ouch." But he's still watching Ren's face.

[willowandoak]

Ren's mouth slants in amusement. He looks, perhaps, slightly less open than he did a few minutes ago, but he's not upset or anything, he thinks.

[lakebrat]

Goro considers him. After a moment, he says, casually, "Have you even been to Destinyland for real?"

[willowandoak]

When the hell would he have had the time or the money to go to Destinyland...? "Nah," he says easily. "I'm a Dome Town scrub." Not that he's been to Dome Town more than a couple times either, but whatever. "Why? Are you secretly a Destiny fan?"

[lakebrat]

"Yeah. Dome Town is more our scene, isn't it?" He grins for a moment, feeling the tension, before sitting up, against the pillow he propped up earlier.

"I've only been there once." Quietly, he adds, "The night Haru's father died. She had taken us there."

[willowandoak]

His hands fall still on his phone. After a second, he glances sidelong at Goro with guarded, evaluative eyes, trying to gauge what reaction Goro wants to elicit. Guilt? Awkwardness?

[lakebrat]

Understanding would be more like it. There's no accusation in his face, no condemnation. He reaches carefully for Ren's hand.

[willowandoak]

And after another few seconds, he takes Goro's hand. His mouth twists, and his eyes drop to gaze at their clasped hands. But some of the tense suspicion has bled out of him.

[lakebrat]

He follows Ren's gaze down, down to where their hands have wound around each other, connecting them. Even after the Palace, he doubts he'll ever know the whole of what Ren went through.

"That was what I thought of, before," he adds. "When you mentioned Destinyland."

Not something awful, he means. Or, at least, not something that repulsed him.

[willowandoak]

Ren lifts their clasped hands and presses a lingering kiss to Goro's knuckles. He sighs, a slow breath against their skin.

But he can't quite let it go. "If you don't like Destinyland," he says, "there was another Palace kind of like that. Not a farm, but a ranch. Raising racehorses. It was a pretty easy Palace, but my boots were covered in horse shit by the end of it."

Again, he watches Goro's face. Another test.

[lakebrat]

And the thing is—the story Ren is telling him is not just that someone died. It's about how Ren was forced to kill them. And it's about the darkness inside Ren, that's part and parcel of him, ineradicable.

Goro wants to know everything about that Ren. He wants to face that darkness that Ren is already transcending. So he trusts, unafraid, snuggling back down in the bed, inviting Ren to come with him, down into the world they could both share.

"Do I want to know what sort of person had racehorses in their Palace?" he asks. "It sounds... controlling."

[willowandoak]

And Ren follows, of course, dropping his phone on the pillow as an afterthought. Nothing else could ever hold his attention in the face of Goro's acceptance. His head spins with it. He takes a slow breath, savoring the quiet, the lack of danger. The waiting expression on Goro's face.

"A really fucking self-important golf coach," he murmurs. "He only wanted to coach kids who could go pro and win the Masters and shit. He dropped the son of one of Shido's people. Pissed her off."

[lakebrat]

So he died for it, Goro thinks. And though a large part of him says good, fuck him, the core of him sets the blame where it belongs: on Shido, and on that woman. Even if part of him is a little jealous of that kid.

"I never thought of women requesting mental shutdowns," he murmurs quietly, reaching to slide an arm around Ren's waist. "In my head they were always only men. Sexist of me, I suppose."

Not half. Ann would kill him. And Haru would look down at her tea.

[willowandoak]

"It was usually men." He runs his fingers through Akechi's hair, watching as the soft strands slide across his skin. "But anyone can be a psycho. I know you had a weird string of guy Palaces for a while, except for Sakura. But Niijima isn't exactly the only woman with a Palace, either."

[lakebrat]

Mmm. He can't help but press back against Ren's hand, eyes narrowing with pleasure. "And Niijima feels different, I suppose because she's Makoto's sister. And"—the secret tugs at him for a moment, before his resolve returns—"because we weren't going to change her heart."

[willowandoak]

He blinks. He hasn't asked Goro about the details of the plan the Thieves clearly had; he can't exactly blame Goro if he wants to keep it to himself. But that doesn't mean he hasn't had feelings about it. A strange, wriggly feeling takes root in his stomach.

Regardless of all that, none of his speculation included not changing Niijima's heart. "Really? I wouldn't have thought younger-Niijima would be cool with that."

[lakebrat]

"Well, she has a backup plan," he murmurs. "She thinks we can talk her down—or rather, that she can. If anything, your Palace adds more evidence for that."

And it might add more weight to Goro's insistence that they wouldn't change Ren's heart, of course—he's already talked this possible alternative through, with Makoto and the others.

He offers Ren a smile. "You did say you wouldn't let me near the police. And besides, after all of this, tricking you was never going to work."

And he doesn't want to.

[willowandoak]

"And I won't," he says grimly, just to make sure Goro has no doubt in his mind whatsoever that that's the case.

Then he moves on to the issue that's currently confusing him. "Okay, you don't change her heart, you just... talk her down instead. How the hell does that help you?"

He will never, he thinks, stop being hungry for Goro's secrets.