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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]

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.

[lakebrat]

But Goro reaches up, brushing a gentle thumb across Ren's cheek. "Exploring my Palace?"

It's only fair, after all.

[willowandoak]

"I wish."

It doesn't quite come out with the dark amusement he intends.

[lakebrat]

Heh. Leaning over, he presses a quick kiss to Ren's lips. Something to explore in lieu, perhaps.

[willowandoak]

Ren holds Goro in place with the hand in his hair and deepens the kiss, sighing against his mouth. For a moment, he lets himself be drawn in and distracted... but then, for once, he remembers why he came here.

"Crow is gonna get mad eventually," he mutters. "If I keep ignoring him to fuck."

[lakebrat]

"Crow will make do. Though if you want to text him back...." he says against Ren's lips. He's here, though he won't say as much. "It's not as if you can trick him with a decoy treasure, after all."

As they'd intended to do to Ren. Oops.

[willowandoak]

Honestly, that's true. Crow can wait. He's about to go back in for another kiss when that brings him up short.

"A decoy treasure? How would that even work? Like, wouldn't the real one be there too?"

[lakebrat]

"We're Phantom Thieves," he says, brushing his lips against Ren's again—in other words, he's been worrying about that one as well. "We'd have managed it somehow. Worst case, we'd have switched it behind your back and concealed the original."

Flawless? No. But cognition accounts for a hell of a lot.

[willowandoak]

"Goro," he says, half-laughing in incredulity, but he leaves it there. "What would you do about the Palace?" he asks instead. "Wouldn't I have noticed when it, like... I don't know. Went away. Like mine did." He doesn't know exactly what happened to it, but he could feel it starting to come apart even by the time he fell asleep.

"That would've been funny," he says reflectively. "Two hundred cops caught in a vanishing Palace."

[lakebrat]

"Best thing for them," he says, with a grin; one of the things they share is zero love for the police. But he thinks about Ren's question, calculation written on his face. "Would you have noticed it?"

He doesn't particularly feel a tie to any of the Palaces he's been in, but perhaps Ren is different? "I knew there was a chance you'd see it still in the Nav. But, to be honest, I was hoping you'd be too busy to check. They do take time to come down, sometimes." But not days, and he knows that.

Nerves flutter in his stomach again, against the back of his neck; the feeling of someone walking over his grave, and those of all his friends. "It was the only chance we had, Ren. Everything was stacked against us. We had to take the gamble."

It's a compliment, of sorts.

[willowandoak]

He exhales slowly. It's been months, but he still remembers it: the sinking inevitability like a cinderblock around his ankle, every day that passed another day that he had failed to find a way out—but he had known even then that there was no escaping from the plan. Not really. And Goro had been the same, apparently, if this was their fucking plan. Goro's life, bright and precious, and they were willing to stake it on this... this entire series of long shots.

Ren knows he doesn't exactly hold the moral high ground on the issue of plans to protect Goro that November. But something about it still gets to him.

He closes his eyes and presses his forehead against Goro's. "What then? What was the point of keeping her Palace around?"