Dinner was awkward.
Go hadn't expected his sister to feed him, hadn't expected Shin to put a glass in front of him as though he were finally an adult even though he had technically been an adult for nearly a year and a half, hadn't expected him to do the same for Chase. Chase had taken one sip of the beer, made a face at either the carbonation or the taste that Go was fairly sure only he saw, and carried out a credible impression of someone consuming a drink without ever actually emptying the glass over the course of the entire evening.
Part of the reason for how weird everything was, Go was sure, was because even though they'd all worked together, he hadn't spent much time with his sister's husband that hadn't involved hunting Roidmudes at first, and after that he'd been too focused on getting Chase back to waste time with distractions. Chase didn't help matters, either.
Go overcompensated, knowing he was too loud, too enthusiastic, utterly losing track of what he was talking about and dragging Chase to the forefront at every opportunity. Shin matched him, after a while, and Go pretended not to see his sister casting concerned glances in his direction when she thought he wasn't looking.
By the time the evening was finally over, and Go had collected his keys from the driver service which had taken his bike back to his apartment and closed the door on the outside world, he was exhausted all over again. Chase was staring at him, expression unreadable.
"Did you want to find your own place?" Go didn't want Chase to go somewhere else.
"Do friends live together?" Chase returned, after a moment of silence that went on far too long.
"Sometimes," Go said. "Not often." He hesitated. "But it would be harder for you, like it was for me when I first got here. Kiriko had to co-sign for me, because I didn't have a work history here."
"Work history," Chase repeated. "This is what humans do."
"Oh, fuck." Go rubbed his eyes. "Tomorrow, okay? We'll talk about it tomorrow. You stay here for a while. You just got back. We'll work it out later and you can just. You can stay. I want you to stay."
"All right." Chase inclined his head fractionally, and Go wasn't sure what, exactly, had just happened.
"I'm going to bed. Do you, ah, do you need to sleep?" He knew perfectly well that Chase needed to shut down periodically to allow his self-repair routines to handle the wear and tear of day to day activities, but the question slipped out anyway.
"I will be fine," Chase said, which wasn't an answer.
"Take the bed." Go pointed. "We'll pick up something for you to sleep on tomorrow." He didn't have a spare futon, but he could use the quilt from the kotatsu for one night. It would be fine.
Chase looked at him for a moment. "Thank you," he said, before walking into the living room and sitting down crosslegged in the corner farthest from the sliding doors. "Good night," he added, resting his hands on his lap.
"What," Go said, but Chase had apparently already shut down. "I can't even," he said, and decided it wasn't worth the argument to be a good host. If Chase wanted to sleep on the floor in the corner, Go wasn't going to stop him.
Morning brought the promise of sunlight visible through the bedroom window, even facing north and shaded by the access porch running the length of the building as it was. Go crawled out of bed, scrubbing his fingers through his hair, and went to find Chase.
Chase was gone.
"Breathe," Go muttered to himself. The bike was parked in front of the apartment, when Go went to look, which probably meant that Chase had just decided to wander around. "Stop being ridiculous."
Go scrawled a quick note and left it on the kitchen table, pocketing his keys and going for a run. It had been one of the few things that had kept him even-keeled and reasonable while he'd been trying to put Chase back together, and now that he knew he'd succeeded, it was pure joy. Not having spent much time at his apartment, Go wasn't particularly familiar with the surrounding area. He paid attention to it now, losing himself in the rhythm of feet striking the pavement, keeping his body loose. There were a few places to practice tricks more complicated than simple running, he was pleased to see.
Chase's bike was gone when Go returned, and he pushed down the urge to drop everything and search for him. "We're getting him a phone," Go said out loud, staring at the empty space. One of his neighbors, a woman Go knew by sight but not by name, gave him a wide berth as she exited the building. Go smiled and waved, but that didn't help. He rolled his eyes when he was sure she was no longer looking and jogged up the stairs.
Chase still hadn't returned by the time Go showered, dressed, and finished a few hours on the laptop working, nor was he anywhere to be seen when Go wrestled a set of boxes up the stairs that purported to have all the pieces necessary to construct another low bed. It wasn't until Go had seriously considered calling Shin and asking him to put out an APB on their missing friend that Chase knocked on the front door.
"You don't have to knock," Go said, annoyed and relieved at the same time. "You can just come in."
"I don't have a key," Chase pointed out, quite reasonably.
"Well, it's too late to make one for you now. Where did you even go?" Keys went onto the list of things Chase needed to get, along with a phone. Go eyed the purple jacket and decided that clothes were the third item.
"My driver's license expired," Chase said, producing the license he'd worked hard to get, and then holding up an entirely new one. "I have been driving illegally."
"It's fine," Go said, taking the new one and looking it over. The new license had Go's address on it, which begged the question of how Chase had pulled that particular stunt off. Shin, probably, Go decided. "I have something for you to sleep on," he said, handing the card back.
Chase, upon prompting, looked into the bedroom to see the still-unopened boxes on the floor. "Thank you," he said, dubiousness radiating outward from every pore.
Go laughed. "I didn't know if you wanted to set it up to sleep in here, or in the living room," he said. "I don't use either one much."
Chase turned toward him, appearing to give the matter grave consideration. "If the bedroom is acceptable and appropriate, then I believe it should be set up there," he said.
Fitting both beds into the single small room was difficult; Go eventually shoved his under the window and set Chase's parallel to it, so that the closet door was still reachable and the door to the room wasn't blocked. There was barely enough space to walk around the furniture, which was an oddly welcome change from the near-sterility of the rest of the apartment.
At one point, while Go was swearing at one of the screws that didn't fit properly into the pre-drilled hole, Chase asked innocently whether most people didn't just roll out a futon at night and store it during the day, which Go answered with his having gotten used to not sleeping on the floor while living overseas, which then led to explaining that different countries had different standards for normal. Chase looked dismayed.
"But," he said. "But you're all human."
"Well, sure." The screw finally slotted into place, and Go tightened it with a vindictive sense of satisfaction. "But not all humans are the same. Not even here."
Chase opened his mouth and then closed it again. "But," he said again, and fell silent.
Go grinned. "It's a big world. Lots of neat stuff. Interesting people."
Chase's reactions to the wide world of fascinating people were even more fun the next day; he hadn't had much experience with anything not directly related to the Roidmudes, and Go thoroughly enjoyed watching him suffer through a sales pitch for a one of several overpriced smartphones. The whole experience was improved by Chase figuring out both that Go wasn't going to help and that he knew exactly what he needed. None of which was what the salesperson was trying to sell him.
Chase left with a working phone on Go's account and a disgruntled salesperson nonetheless smiling a polite goodbye. "Why," Chase said after a moment.
"Hang on." There was a coffee shop a few stores down, and Go steered them inside. Chase took his coffee black, and Go with copious amounts of sugar; once they were seated at the only empty indoor table, Go pulled Chase's phone out of the box and started setting it up. "Why what?" he asked, adding contacts into Chase's phone book.
"Why the whole process?"
"Oh, now you want me to explain capitalism." Shin got added to Chase's contact list, along with Kiriko, and the rest of the former special investigation team, as well as Go himself.
"Capitalism." Go could all but see Chase searching through his memories for the definition of the word, and attempted to forestall him before he began to explain it. "So I will need to work," Chase said, which was not what Go was expecting.
Go hadn't thought about it. "I mean, I guess?"
"Do you work?" Chase looked dubious when asking, and Go laughed.
"You've seen my camera," he said. "I take pictures and sell them. I record videos, too, for the internet."
"What should I do?"
For a moment, Go thought Chase was joking, but he was apparently entirely serious about the prospect of work. Part of the human experience, Go supposed. "Ask Shin," he suggested, and was relieved when Chase dropped the subject.
Copying a set of keys for the apartment took less time than finding a set of appropriate keychains for Chase; Go felt that something decorative was appropriate, whereas Chase apparently simply wanted to hook his new keys onto the key to the Ride Chaser and leave it at that. Go won the argument when he found a dusty plastic figure of Chase himself, as Kamen Rider Chaser, in the back of a small souvenir shop. He found one of Mach, too, which Chase insisted on buying.
Mach went onto Chase's keys, while the Chaser figurine decorated Go's.
"They are a set," Chase said, utterly serious. Go, who felt he'd lost the high ground regarding decorative keys when his own had been demonstrated to be unadorned, shrugged and agreed. He brushed the dust off of the little Chaser doll, smiling at it.
Clothes shopping went spectacularly poorly; Go knew exactly what he liked and where to get it. Chase had no idea what he wanted, and Go had zero patience, which was how he found himself on his sister's doorstep.
"You know I have a job, right," Kiriko said, once again balancing Eiji on her hip.
"It's Saturday," Go hazarded, fairly sure he was correct. It was the first weekend in January, he was almost certain.
"And a husband. And a child." Kiriko stood back to let them both enter.
"I'll clean the apartment? And watch Eiji? Please?" Go drew out the word. "He's driving me crazy. And he can't wear that all the time."
"Crazy?" Chase had snuck up on Go while he wasn't paying attention, and Go tripped over the step up into the apartment proper and went sprawling on the floor.
"You don't know what you want and I don't know what you want and Kiriko is better at this than I am." Go flopped over onto his back. "It's not because she's a woman, either. She's just good at everything."
Chase opened his mouth. Kiriko cut him off. "The apartment doesn't need cleaning, except for the floors, and the bathtub. Eiji goes down for a nap in an hour. Feed him the container with today's date before he goes to sleep."
Go nodded. "Done and done."
"Heat it up first," Kiriko said. "Make sure it's not too hot before you give it to him."
Go would have protested that he knew how not to damage a baby, but it was the first time he was actually going to be alone with his nephew. "Where's Shin?"
"Working overtime." Kiriko frowned. "Something came up last night, and he had to leave early this morning."
"Ah." Go climbed to his feet and held out his hands. He could take care of an eight month old for a few hours. Definitely. No problem. The suddenly dubious look his sister was giving him wasn't helping. "I got this," he said, and then Kiriko had to show him exactly how to hold the kid.
The few hours until his sister and his best friend returned were the longest of Go's life. When Kiriko finally came back, Go had held up his end of the deal by the skin of his teeth. He hadn't been able to get Eiji to stay quiet in his own bed, and Kiriko took one look at him and started laughing quietly.
"He wouldn't stop crying," Go stage-whispered. He was trapped on the floor next to the couch, Eiji silently asleep across his chest. "How do you get him to stay quiet?"
Kiriko somehow managed to not only lift the baby off of Go without waking him, but vanished into the bedroom and returned baby-free without so much as a peep from what Go was all but certain was a small demon in human form and not an actual human being. "Practice," she said. As if on cue, Eiji started to cry. Kiriko sighed. "Sometimes luck," she said. "Excuse me."
"Thank you. I love you. Bye." Go dragged Chase out of his sister's apartment by the wrist, barely stopping to put his shoes on properly before they both made it down to the street. Chase was still wearing the purple outfit, although there were a few packages promisingly strapped to the Ride Chaser. Go opted to further their escape rather than ask about the shopping trip, letting Chase catch up with him.
"Your sister is very efficient," Chase said when they reached home and Go cut the engine.
"Of course she is." Kiriko was the entire reason Shin got anything done, Go did not say. She'd been the most constant part of his own life, after their father had left and their mother had died. She was the most efficient and competent person Go knew. "Wait, what did she make you buy?"
Go had not, at any point after returning to Japan, thought that he would need more closet space. The apartment he'd rented – technically not within Tokyo city limits, which made it not particularly conveniently located to anything, but at least it was cheaper – had a bedroom, and a living room, and a kitchen. Despite knowing how efficiently space could be used, it had taken him several days to find all of the closets; the one behind the kitchen door he never closed had escaped his notice for an embarrassingly long time.
Kiriko had not only bought Chase normal-person clothes, she'd made sure he would be prepared for a wide range of social situations. Go himself didn't own half of what Kiriko had gotten to outfit Chase. And fitting it into the bedroom closet required some creative storage, since the bedroom closet was horizontally bisected by the same type of sturdy shelf that graced the living room storage space.
"What the hell, Kiriko," Go muttered. She'd even bought pajamas.
"Your sister is very efficient," Chase repeated, and unzipped his jacket.
"What – what are you doing?" Go had forgotten, if he'd ever known, that Chase didn't actually have a shirt under his customary jacket. Whether that was because he didn't feel he needed one or was simply unaware that most people wore shirts under jackets – and since any shirt wouldn't be seen, it was irrelevant whether or not it was there – Go had no idea.
Chase fixed him with a look that said Go was asking ridiculous questions. "Changing my clothes," he said, jacket half off.
Go pulled his eyes away from Chase's bare chest, suddenly strongly reminded of the incident that had resulted in the majority of the data responsible for rebuilding Chase's core. Hypnos, an AI system created to help program the Roidmudes, had pulled the data out of Go's subconscious. It had done it by putting Go into a lucid dream and extracting the data from the background while Go moved through the dream; it had gone wrong, of course, given that Banno had been Hypnos' original creator and had left a nasty subroutine buried in Hypnos' programming, but it had worked out as planned in the end. The point that had currently struck Go between the eyes was the content of the lucid dream.
He'd taken Chase to an amusement park, a movie, and finally a café; if Chase had imprinted on a woman instead of the very male Kano Koichi, Go would have sworn blind that he was taking Chase on a date. As it was, he'd asked Hypnos what, exactly, the AI thought it had been doing. Hypnos had retorted that all it did was put Go into a dream state, and that Go himself was directing everything that happened.
Go hadn't wanted to accept that as an explanation, and had rationalized that perhaps he just wanted to show Chase aspects of a normal, human life; it was far easier to accept than Hypnos' nonchalant statement that if they were on a date, clearly Go wanted them to be on a date. He'd clung to it, over the past few months, through his attempted relationship with Reiko spectacularly falling apart over his dedication to reviving Chase, through every obstacle that told him he should let the sleeping dead lie, and now that Chase was casually undressing in front of him, Go found it very difficult to hold on to his hasty justification.
"Could you," he said, voice suddenly thick. He cleared his throat. "You're not supposed to just strip in front of your friends," he said, and even though Chase was between him and the bedroom door, Go made it out of the room without so much as brushing up against his nominal friend.
The living room was too hot, and Go slid the balcony door open. Outside was freezing, but he didn't care. He slipped outside, closing the door behind him and making sure the curtains were still drawn. He had to fight with them, the heavy folds of cloth seeming to impede his escape with willful intent, but finally he made it onto the narrow ledge with the door firmly closed and no one able to see him in the dark. Probably.
Go leaned on the balcony railing, dropping his head to his folded arms. He didn't want to sleep with Chase, absolutely not. What he'd done with Ethan, in the United States, in the brief time before he'd been recruited to test the Mach system, that had been experimentation. Everyone did that. It didn't mean anything. It didn't mean he wanted to do the same thing with Chase. He isn't even human, Go told himself, and then immediately felt ashamed that he was insulting his best friend, even if it was inside the privacy of his own head.
"Chase was in love with Kiriko," Go said under his breath. "Keep that in mind before you do something stupid." Chase, for all that he had been literally built and programmed, had more of a handle on what was appropriate than Go did. Go wasn't about to confuse him; Chase had enough trouble as it was. Go certainly had no desire to pursue anything of a romantic nature with Chase, he told himself, so there was absolutely no reason to worry about it. Just to make it perfectly clear, he was going to take Chase out to the same activities that had been in his dream. Just to prove that he wanted to show Chase what living like a human was and nothing more.
What Go meant to say the next morning was Let's go to Disney Sea. That would be the first part of the plan; the movie and the café would be the following day, because there was no point in going to Disney without spending the entire day there. What he actually said was, "We should break into Nara Dreamland Park."
Chase, looking far too alert for Go's peace of mind, frowned at him. Go had woken to find Chase's bed neatly made and Chase in the kitchen, sitting in front of Go's closed laptop. When Go had walked through the door, yawning, Chase had reached over and pressed the start button on the coffee maker, and Go had tried to suggest a theme park. "I was under the impression that theme parks were entered by buying tickets," Chase said, finally.
Go rubbed his eyes, finally noticing that Chase was wearing trendily ripped jeans under a loose purple shirt. "It's abandoned," he said. There was a slit up the side of the shirt, and Go had the impression that if Chase raised his arms high enough, the slit would ride up above the waist of his jeans. He stopped looking at it and went to find a coffee cup. Given that the kitchen was almost narrow enough for him to touch both walls while standing in the middle, he didn't have to go far.
"You want to break into an abandoned amusement park," Chase said.
"It has a traditional wooden roller coaster." That should have been enough of an explanation; Go had considered it as a place to practice lighting and composition in a static environment, and maybe film a video of climbing the coaster in question; it depended on how dynamic he could make the footage look. Nara was a little too far away from Tokyo and the Drive Pit, though, and he'd tabled it.
"Why is that significant?" The ends of Chase's sleeves were just a little too long, and it gave him an air of being innocent and vulnerable when Go knew perfectly well that he was neither one, and that Chase absolutely did not need to be protected. Although given that Chase's last act had been one of self-sacrifice, there was something to be said for standing between Chase and any potential threat. "Go?" Chase prompted, and Go realized that he'd been staring, empty cup in hand, for longer than he should have been.
"Because wooden roller coasters are awesome," he said. "And it'll be fun."
Go was absolutely not avoiding Disney because theme parks were traditionally a romantic date sort of activity, not when he'd decided to bring Chase to a theme park to show himself how much he did not want to date Chase. He filled the coffee cup and added sugar. Chase did not look convinced by Go's argument in favor of technically illegal activity.
"There's something interesting about an abandoned area," Go said. "Lost potential."
"What could have been," Chase said, tilting his head to the side. "I understand."
Go had no idea what it was that Chase thought he'd understood, but he wasn't about to look a gift horse in the mouth. "I'll get dressed."
Chase was looking at his shiny new phone when Go emerged from the bedroom, feeling slightly more awake. "It is four hours by train," he said, and he'd learned to use the phone quickly.
"We'll take the bikes," Go objected, but apparently that would take considerably longer, which was how he found himself sitting in a bullet train heading west on an impulse.
Sneaking into the park was easy. Kiriko had chosen a dark jacket for Chase – Go was absolutely certain Chase had had nothing to do with the decision making process – and Go knew enough about being inconspicuous while trying to reach a location that his red and white coat drew no attention. It didn't take long to get beyond the sight of the guard, and then they were within the park proper.
Most of the space was taken up with smaller rides, a European-inspired main street, a carousel; none of it particularly interesting. It was surprisingly clean, for a place that had been closed for over a decade. Go tried some of the doors, just out of curiosity, but they were all locked, and he didn't think it was worth it to break in. Chase followed him, expressionless, as Go climbed on the carousel, camera in hand.
"Sit," Go told him, and Chase finally blinked.
Go posed Chase on the carousel, in the teacups, and on the roofs of the locked buildings – which were ridiculously easy to climb up on top of, even if they were locked from the inside – before they got to the wooden roller coaster. Chase was hesitant at first, clearly unsure why Go was photographing him.
"Trust me," Go said. Chase's lack of expression came across as wistful, in the photographs, the ideal counterpoint to the abandoned landscape, and Go had done enough work with models to give Chase the right direction to get the most out of the lighting they had left. It was nearly dark, by the time Go was staring up the wooden frame of the roller coaster for which the park had been famous.
"It is made of wood," Chase said.
"What, you thought I was joking?" Go slapped him lightly on the shoulder. "I think we came here once when I was really little," he said. "Kiriko would remember."
"You do not?"
Go shrugged. "Memories are weird. Sometimes you think you remember something, but it didn't really happen. Or sometimes you remember it differently."
"I remember everything," Chase said. "Exactly as it happens."
"Yeah, well, that's just part of –" Go paused. "Part of who you are," he finished. Chase not being human didn't mean that he was less, just that he was different. It had taken Go far too long to understand that. "Chase," he said suddenly. "I'm sorry."
"Sorry for what?" Most people would have looked wary, at an apology coming out of the blue. Chase simply looked expectant, waiting for an explanation.
"I said some things to you," Go said. He couldn't look Chase in the eyes, his gaze getting as far as Chase's shoulder and getting stuck there. "Things I shouldn't have said." It was unexpectedly difficult. "When I said that you and I couldn't – couldn't be friends, because you weren't human. That was cruel, and I'm sorry."
"But I'm not human," Chase said.
"That doesn't mean you're not a person." Go finally managed to look his friend in the face, afraid of what he was going to see, but Chase didn't look angry or hurt. He just looked like Chase, calm and unruffled. "You're important to me. You're the most important person to me, except maybe for my sister. I want you to know that."
"Thank you," Chase said, after what seemed like a very long pause. "I do not take such a position lightly."
For a moment, Go was overwhelmingly disappointed that Chase hadn't returned the sentiment, but the feeling vanished as quickly as it had come, and he found himself laughing. Chase's confused look just made him laugh harder, and he tried to explain. "Most people," he said, when he'd finally gotten control of his breathing back, "most people say something along the lines of 'I care about you too.'" What he'd intended to say was that he understood that Chase, as a Roidmude, didn't technically have emotions.
"But you already know that I care about you," Chase said, and the words hit Go like a blow to the chest. Of course he knew. Chase had died for Go. "I didn't only protect you because of Kiriko."
Go could only stare at him, mouth hanging slightly open. He closed it with a snap, turning toward the wooden frame standing in the beginnings of twilight. "So the view from the top of this has to be spectacular," he said, and started looking for a way up.
The wooden frame was easy to climb, and Go went more rapidly than he might have otherwise. He could hear Chase following him, and he was absolutely not running away from his friend. He just wanted to be able to photograph the view from the top of the wooden framework before the light vanished entirely. That was all.
Without warning, Go's hand slipped, and he swung outward, feet flailing. He reached for the handhold again, but he couldn't close his fingers on it, and he couldn't find purchase with his feet. He was going to die, falling off of a stupid rollercoaster in an abandoned theme park, after he'd survived being a Kamen Rider. It was ridiculous. He could feel his one remaining grip slipping, and then there was a hand pushing his foot firmly onto a ledge and that gave him enough leverage to grab the framework with both hands and hold on.
"You should be more careful," Chase said from below him, because of course he hadn't slipped.
"Thanks," Go said, and kept moving upward.
The highest point of the roller coaster was easily accessible, once they reached the ascending part of the track, and Go waved Chase to stand on it. He clambered onto the railing on the side, so that he could get a shot of Chase and the view from above. Chase eyed him, clearly concerned now. It was going to ruin the photo.
"Try to look less upset." Go moved back off the railing and circled around to Chase's other side. It was nearly too dark to get anything useful, and he readjusted the camera. "Smile."
He climbed on the railing again, holding up the camera; he couldn't quite see the details of the shot, only just enough to frame it properly. Or so he hoped. Chase smiled at him, just the tiniest curl of his lips upward, and Go smiled back. He closed the lens, tucking the camera inside his coat and zipping it up again, before hopping off the railing. He misjudged the landing.
The wooden slat that was supposed to take half of his weight took all of it as Go's other foot landed on nothing at all and he tilted outward toward the yawning chasm below for the second time. He reached forward, arms windmilling in an attempt to halt his own descent, and felt himself begin to fall. Only pure luck let him hook one knee over the low railing that hadn't been enough to stop him from going over it, but he could hear it crack under the sudden strain as he swung, upside down, over a steep drop.
"Go!" Chase darted forward, but the railing cracked again, more loudly, and Chase stumbled to a halt.
The aged wood was about to give way, the decade without maintenance having worn it more badly than it had seemed. Go held perfectly still, only turning his head. One of the wooden crossbeams was within reach, and he carefully stretched out an arm.
"Go," Chase said again, more frantically.
"Just hold still," Go snapped. He had a solid grip on the crossbeam with one hand, but it angled too far down for him to grip it with the other. "Don't move. I've got this."
Before he'd spent so much time neglecting himself in his attempts to restore Chase, before he'd spent months doing almost nothing except running and staring at lines upon lines of code, Go would have had no doubts in his own agility. Now, he could feel the strain already. But if Chase tried to grab him and pull him back, and failed, Go would only end up dragging Chase over the edge. He couldn't do that.
"I know what to do," he said, and swung off the breaking railing. The next few seconds were a blur of rapidly shifting gravity and adrenaline, and Go was never quite sure afterwards how he had pulled it off, but he ended up clinging to the support rail, both legs wrapped firmly around it as the last few splinters rained off the broken rail above him.
"Go!" Chase shouted, face appearing over the edge, white in the gathering dark.
"I'm okay, I'm okay." Go couldn't quite make himself let go of the support strut, not even when Chase extended a hand downward. "Just a second." His camera pressed against his sternum, and Go felt at it carefully. It didn't seem broken from outside his jacket, but it would have to be carefully examined once they'd gotten off the rollercoaster and into somewhere with good lighting. If Go had nearly died getting pictures of Chase at the top of an abandoned rollercoaster and then lost the pictures, he was going to be extremely upset.
"Go," Chase said for the third time, and Go reached upward to grab his friend's hand.
He made it onto the track without incident, and lay flat on his back staring at the now navy-blue sky. His heart pounded against his chest, and Chase stared down at him worriedly.
"Don't die," he said.
"I'm not dying, I just need to breathe." Go sat up, reaching inside his jacket. The camera still felt intact. He zipped it up again, glad that the camera hadn't simply fallen out while he was dangling upside down. "Come on."
"Perhaps we should wait up here until it is light enough to see," Chase said.
"It's cold. I will literally freeze to death." Go wasn't quite sure that was true, but he had no desire to wait out the long January night on top of a roller coaster with no protection from the elements. Chase might not be uncomfortable in the cold – Go had no idea – but Go wasn't about to die from exposure. "Besides, we just walk down. Easy."
Chase gave him the most unimpressed look Go had seen all day, clear even in the half dark.
"Really," Go said, and climbed to his feet more carefully than he'd done anything on the roller coaster so far. He stopped himself from grinning smugly at Chase when they reached a point low enough to simply jump off of, no more than a meter and a half high, and Go landed perfectly with his knees bent. Chase dropped to the ground beside him, dusting off his hands, and still giving him what Go thought was an excessively dubious glare.
"Come on, we're fine," Go said. The adrenaline still hadn't faded, and he couldn't stand still. "There's one more thing to look at, come on." Without giving Chase the chance to object, he struck off toward the only structure they hadn't wandered around.
The entrance to the tunnel of horror was pitch dark, and Go pulled out his cell phone. A flashlight would have been useful, he thought, but his phone was bright enough. Chase stood at the entrance, apparently having no desire to go inside.
"Last thing," Go said, turning around. He had to keep moving, and he bounced up and down on the balls of his feet. "It's even on flat ground. No chance of anything horrible happening, look."
"I do not wish to go inside," Chase said, and it suddenly became very important that Chase follow him through the final attraction.
"Come on," Go said again. "It's not going to be scary."
"That is not the point." Chase folded his arms. "You appear to be suffering an adverse reaction to nearly falling off the rollercoaster. Twice."
"You know what?" Go flung his arms out to the side. "Fine. Fine. You want to leave, we'll leave." He was shouting by the end of the sentence, and the sudden appearance of a flashlight startled him. The security guard had finally noticed that someone had snuck into the park and was running toward them.
"Leaving seems like a good idea," Chase said, but Go was already running and Chase was right behind him before the second syllable had left his mouth.
It wasn't difficult to lose the guard in the dark, but Go didn't stop until they'd gotten back over the fence and down the road toward the train station. It wasn't too late to start back home, but he stopped just before reaching the lights of the business district, breathing harder than the run demanded, bent half over with his hands on his knees.
"Go?" Chase said uncertainly.
Go started laughing, the fact that he'd just survived falling off of a wooden rollercoaster twice finally hitting home. "That was amazing," he said, straightening up and reaching toward Chase. Without thinking about it, he pulled Chase toward him and kissed him hard on the mouth. Chase froze, not responding at all. Go released him, backing away, heart sinking straight into his stomach. "I – I'm sorry," he said, and started walking rapidly toward the train station.
"Go," Chase said again, an entirely different note of uncertainty in his voice.
Go waved him off. "It didn't happen. Just. Pretend it didn't happen. Nothing happened."
Chase wasn't – Go made himself uncurl his hands, straightening his fingers and trying not to look like he'd just ruined something. Chase had pursued Kiriko, when he'd thought he wanted a romantic connection with someone. When he'd sacrificed himself to save Go's life, he'd even said it – he wanted to protect someone Kiriko cared about. Go wasn't going to force himself where he wasn't wanted; Chase hadn't responded, and that was as good as saying no.
The train station wasn't exactly crowded, but there were enough people there to make having a personal conversation incredibly awkward. Go hadn't thought about Chase's propensity for ignoring what was socially acceptable, even if he knew to begin with.
"What," Chase started, as they were standing on the platform, surrounded by who weren't paying attention to them now but definitely would if Go let Chase keep talking.
"That's not something friends do, okay," Go said, trying to be reassuring. "It's not going to happen again. Ever."
Chase still looked uncertain, but he nodded and stepped farther away from Go. Go wished it felt less awkward, less like he was ripping a hole in his own chest, but he was the one who kept falling for all the wrong people. Irony of ironies, the person he'd fallen for this time wasn't even a person, and it was still all wrong.
The trip back toward Tokyo was silent; Go had thought, at first, that they would spend more than just the single day out in Nara, but that had been before he'd screwed everything up. He had no right to isolate Chase from everything he knew, not after this, not even for a few days. Chase kept looking at him out of the corner of his eyes, but Go resolutely ignored it, and by the time their last train pulled into the station, Chase had given up.
The station was within walking distance of Go's apartment, and he stopped when they reached the parking lot. "I can sleep at Kiriko's, until we find you your own space," he said, trying to give Chase enough space not to feel threatened. The last thing he wanted was for Chase to think Go was going to be pushy, to insist on something Chase didn't want.
Chase tilted his head to the side. "Why would I want you to do that?" he asked, and Go couldn't tell if he meant the question or not.
"If you, I don't know. If you want some space." He had the helmet in his hands already, holding onto it tightly.
"I like having you around," Chase said, and something unlocked in Go's chest. He let out the breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding.
"You really don't mind?" he said.
"It's your home," Chase said. "If anyone is going to leave, it should be me." He paused. "But I don't want to."
"Okay," Go said, his knees going momentarily weak with relief. "Okay." He hadn't ruined everything after all. "Let's, uh. Let's go upstairs." The mostly-empty apartment had never seemed so welcoming.
Chase was gone again when Go woke the next morning, along with his bike, and Go suppressed the automatic panicky assumption that he'd driven Chase away after all. He texted a smiley face, to which Chase replied with a photo of himself wearing some sort of uniform.
Did you get a job while I wasn't looking, Go texted.
Yes, Chase replied, followed immediately by It is inappropriate for me to use my phone while at work.
Go had no idea what kind of job Chase was even doing, which turned out to be the normal state of the universe for long enough that he thought Chase might actually be playing some sort of elaborate practical joke. Go managed to set up four gigs as a photographer, edit and publish the photos of Chase in Nara on his personal blog, and film a first person parkour-from-roof-to-roof just to demonstrate that it was, in fact, entirely possible while Chase apparently held down a different job for no more than two shifts in a row at any given company.
"None of this is enjoyable," Chase said three weeks into his apparent foray into the world of adult responsibilities and bill-paying.
Go, who was editing the same picture for an extremely picky bride for the sixth time, blinked and looked up. "It's not supposed to be fun," he said. "It's work."
"You think your job is fun," Chase said, apparently referring to the rooftop video. He'd been playing it on repeat for the last hour, sound turned off.
"Part of my job is fun," Go said. "Part of my other job is ridiculous." It wasn't his fault that the bride had wanted a Western wedding and had gotten a Shinto ceremony; there was no amount of editing that he could do to make her pictures look like something they weren't. "Why don't you work with Shin?"
It seemed like it would be a perfectly reasonable progression; Chase had started life out as a Kamen Rider, after all, handling threats and catching villains.
"He'd probably be happy to help you get started." Go gave up on the picture and sent the final edit back to the client with the most politely worded message he could. It was barely past noon, but he was absolutely done for the day. The client had been referred to him through a loosely organized temp agency, and Go was tempted to refuse future work that came to him through the agency in question. Somehow, every client he'd booked with them had been ridiculously high-maintenance.
"I do not wish to engage in conflict," Chase said, and that was surprising.
Go leaned back, twisting around in his chair to look through the living room door, forgetting about the temp agency entirely. "Wait, what?"
"All I have ever done is fight," Chase said slowly. "Fight, and punish, and destroy. I want to make things better instead."
The front of Go's chair hit the floor with a thump. "Wow." He pushed it back and stretched, climbing out to drop to the floor next to where Chase was sitting with his legs under the kotatsu. The heater under the table was off, and Go reached for the controls to turn it on. Trust Chase to perform a human action while having no idea why he was doing it. "You know there's a heater in here," he said. "Which is why you sit under it."
"I know that," Chase said. "I wasn't cold."
Go didn't have an answer for that one. "So you want to help people," he said, returning to the previous topic. "Being a Kamen Rider helped people. The police help people."
"I don't want to fight," Chase said. "Only if I have to."
"Huh." Go scooted around until he could slide his legs under the blanket on the other side of the table; it wasn't big enough for two people to fit on the same side unless they were extremely friendly, and he had been very careful not to touch Chase in a way that would be unwelcome. "I mean, that's totally okay," he said, when Chase started looking nervous.
"Is there a reason it wouldn't be okay?" Chase said.
Go dropped his head to the table. "You can do whatever you want," he said, feeling like he'd missed something important but having no idea what it was or how to get back to it. "You should do what you want," he added.
"Nothing I've done has seemed like it was helping people," Chase said, and he looked so despondent that Go desperately wanted to hug him to make it go away.
"You'll find something eventually," he said. "Did you talk to Shin? Or Kiriko? Rinna? Kyu, maybe," he said, when it occurred to him that sending Chase to talk to people exclusively associated with the police about What Do You Want To Be when Chase was specifically rejecting law enforcement was possibly a bad idea.
"Would that be helpful?" Chase didn't quite perk up, but he looked slightly less miserable.
"It might," Go said. His phone vibrated in his pocket, and he pulled it out with a frown.
Shinnosuke needs your help, read the text message from Kiriko, followed by an address. Bring Chase. And the Mach Drivers.
"What," Go said, already on his feet and typing back. Roidmudes?
"What is it?" Chase had stood as well, following a click that Go belatedly identified as the kotatsu being turned off so as not to burn down the apartment building while they weren't in it.
"Do you still have the Mach Driver?" Go asked, and Chase nodded once. Go's Driver was stored in the Ride Macher, but he had no idea where Chase kept his, not that it mattered. "You're going to need it," he said, stuffing his feet into his shoes and barely waiting for Chase to follow him before closing and locking the door. His phone buzzed again, and Go read the second text on the way down the stairs.
Shinnosuke doesn't know. Maybe. Looks like.
"Why?" Chase asked.
"Roidmudes," Go said. "Shin needs our help." He checked the bike for the Driver, which was where he'd left it. For all that he hadn't touched it literally in years, it looked as though he'd just stored it in the Ride Macher yesterday. Chase's mouth flattened out to a thin line, and he nodded silently.
The altercation was no longer at the location Kiriko had sent, but it was loud enough that Go had no trouble finding it. Drive was facing down what looked like three Roidmudes, two of them huge and hulking and the third small and compact. As Go pulled up and killed his engine, the small Roidmude darted around Drive and shot him in the back. Drive went down, turning the momentum into a forward roll, but Go could tell that he was wavering.
"Hey!" he shouted, standing dramatically on top of the Ride Macher with both hands on his hips and the Mach Driver already around his waist. "The cavalry has arrived. Let's transform!"
The Driver announced the signal bike sliding home as Go posed with confidence and showmanship, drawing the attention of all three Roidmudes and letting Chase transform unnoticed. The armor settled around Go as the Driver gleefully spit out the word Rider, lighter than Go remembered and filling him with a heady rush of strength.
"Tracking," he said, flipping off the bike to land gracefully in front of it, "terminating – both done at mach speed!" The first of the hulking Roidmudes ran forward, surprisingly fast, and Go leapt over it. "Kamen Rider... Mach!"
He turned the leap into a double kick, smashing the Roidmude's neck with both heels and landing lightly on his hands. Go rolled to his feet again. The Roidmude had staggered but it hadn't gone down, and Go could see Chase at the edge of his field of vision facing off with one of the others while Drive pulled himself back together.
Wearing the armor felt like coming home. Go hadn't realized how much he'd missed it until he'd put it on again, grinning fiercely at his opponent even if it couldn't see his face. The Roidmude was massive, over two meters tall and too wide to fit through a door, and Go was fairly sure that if it hit him, it would literally break him into pieces.
"Aren't I lucky, then," he said to it, tumbling precisely under its attempted kick and standing up behind it to try to bring it down by hitting the backs of its knees. It was like hitting a tree without the benefit of the armor; the Roidmude didn't budge, and Go was within reach. The Roidmude pivoted to kick him in the ribs, taking the advantage that Go had known it would, and he barely managed to dodge. Just the bare edge of the Roidmude's assault was enough to send him sliding along the ground, but he came up on his feet with the Zenrin Shooter in hand.
There was no number on the Roidmude's chest, Go finally noticed. He'd been too close to really see the thing, but now that he was out of arm's reach and pointing a weapon at it, he could finally get a really good look at his opponent. It looked somehow unfinished, almost like a blank template of a Roidmude body that had gotten all the upgrades for speed and strength but none for mirroring human form or personality. The number plate on its chest was badly damaged, scorched as if in an explosion, in a complete contrast to the shiny newness of the rest of its parts.
"They're not using Heavy Acceleration," Drive shouted across the field, and Go blinked. None of the Roidmudes had tried to gain an upper hand by slowing down the events around them.
"Maybe they know it won't do them any good," he called back cheerfully, and while he was distracted, his opponent nearly flattened him.
Go flipped backwards with one hand, coming back upright with the Zenrin Shooter aimed directly at the Roidmude. He fired, and it staggered. Again, and he could see damage sparking across its torso. For a brief moment, Go was strongly reminded of Chase, before he'd resumed his human features, and the barrel of the Zenrin Shooter dropped.
The Roidmude rushed forward. Go clipped the Shooter onto his belt and stood his ground, ducking aside at the last second to punch the damaged area with all the strength he had. The Roidmude stopped, folding over, and Go hit it again. Sparks cascaded over his fist, and the Roidmude reached out to grab him by the throat.
Go felt himself lifted off the ground, and panicked for half a second at the sensation of his throat closing off. He grabbed the Roidmude by the wrist with both hands, trying to pry off its fingers, but they were just as strong as the rest of it and refused to budge.
"Fine," he ground out, or would have, if he'd been able to get any air at all. He swung his legs up, one foot on each side of the Roidmude's shoulder. His vision was sparkling at the edges, starting to go gray, and this was his last shot. With the last of his air, Go tightened his grip on the Roidmude's wrist, braced his feet, and pushed.
The Roidmude's arm tore most of the way free, attached to its body only by the thinnest of wires, and Go hit the ground hard. If he'd had any air left, it would have been driven out of his chest. He rolled over, pulling the Roidmude's arm off entirely, and had the satisfaction of seeing it drop to one knee. The arm was still gripping his throat, though, rigid even though unattached, and Go dug frantically at it.
The grip on his throat loosened just enough to allow him to breathe and Go sucked in a glorious lungful of air. The Roidmude was still down, its other arm working at the socket, stemming the flow of fluid. It was only a matter of time before it recovered. Go wrenched the thumb backward, hearing it break under his grip, and finally peeled the arm off his throat entirely. He panted, feeling the familiar pain of air rushing across his bruised throat."I hate getting choked," he said to the Roidmude.
It was climbing to its feet, but Go beat it there. He hit it across the jaw with its own arm, sending it back down, and then hit it again. The third time, the Roidmude caught the improvised club with its good arm, wrenching it out of Go's hands and swinging it right back. Go ducked again, pulling the Zenrin Shooter free and aiming for the empty socket. He missed, hitting the Roidmude's side instead. It rushed forward, wielding its own arm as a weapon.
"That is all sorts of wrong!" Go shouted at it, dodging and trying to hit it with the Shooter. He missed more often than he hit, but he finally managed to damage its leg enough to slow it down. "This isn't helping anyone," he muttered. He could see Chase crouched on top of a damaged Ride Crosser and squaring off against the smaller Roidmude only a few meters away, but Drive wasn't visible unless he took his eyes off his own opponent.
Go backed up, aiming the Zenrin Shooter again, and heard the distinctive sound of Drive's SpeeDrop coming from behind him and to his left. He glanced over his shoulder just in time to see the third and final Roidmude vanish in a massive fireball. When the glare had faded, his opponent had vanished from the field; a quick glance around showed him that the Chase's opponent had vanished as well.
Drive straightened and released his transformation, armor dissolving to reveal a slightly rumpled and nonplussed Shin in his usual suit. Shin tightened his tie, tucking it back into his jacket with an air of irritation. Go could hear him talking to Krim, but neither Shin's words nor the belt's reply were audible. Go sighed and released his own transformation.
Losing the armor felt like a load of bricks had abruptly been strapped to Go's back and along his limbs. He stumbled slightly; using the armor had always felt exhausting, in the beginning, but he'd gotten used to it. A few months out of it and he'd managed to go right back to square one. He sighed and stretched; that was what he got for not paying more attention to his own physical training while he focused on bringing Chase back. "This is better, though," he said quietly to himself.
Shin jogged over, looking him up and down critically. "You okay?" he asked.
The question rubbed Go the wrong way, as if he couldn't take care of himself, as if he hadn't been backup for Shin as Drive for years. "Everything's fine," he said sharply, and the words caught on a brief flare of pain in his throat. Oh, right, the Roidmude had nearly choked him to death. He reached up, wincing. "Mostly fine," he amended.
Chase appeared at Shin's elbow, armor gone, his artfully distressed jeans significantly worse for the wear. Go noticed that his shirt had inexplicably escaped the damage, and then it registered that Chase was asking him the same question Shin had.
"I'm not the only one who got his ass kicked," he said, and looked over Chase's shoulder at the Ride Crosser. "Can I have my bike back now?"
"Ah," Chase said, and looked at the ground. The Roidmude had damaged the Ride Crosser worse than Go had thought; the two bikes couldn't be detached from each other, and there was only room for one to drive the machine.
"I'm beginning to feel like my bike being gone is a running joke," Go said, leaning on the Ride Crosser and banging his forehead on it in frustration. "What did I ever do to the universe that it keeps taking my bike away."
"The Drive Pit," Shin said, and Go peeled himself off the Ride Crosser to eye his brother-in-law. "All the tools are still there."
"I know," Go said. "I'm the one who broke into the vault to get them out." Not that Shin didn't know that already, but he'd been politely pretending Go had done no such thing since Go had tried to revive Chase the first time and gotten Heart instead.
"I can give you a ride back there," Shin offered. "If Chase wants to drive the Ride Crosser."
Go started to object that he could drive the Ride Crosser just as well as Chase could, but Chase had settled into its driver's seat when Go hadn't been paying attention. Go rolled his eyes, about to object just for the sake of being difficult when something that should have been his first thought only then occurred to him. "Where did they come from?" he asked.
Shin looked blankly at him for a moment and then his eyes widened in comprehension. "There were no numbers on their chests," he said, and Go snapped his fingers in agreement.
"Right?" He folded his arms. "The chestplate on mine was burned, but the rest of it looked new."
"Someone putting old Cores back together?" Shin frowned. "There isn't anyone left who knows how to do that. Especially not now that Medic is gone."
"Except me," Go felt compelled to point out. "And Rinna and Kyu." Shin fixed him with a granite stare that said Go wasn't funny. "I'm not joking," Go said. "I mean, we're not reviving Roidmudes, but I'm just saying. If we can do it, maybe someone else figured it out."
"This was supposed to be over," Shin said, one hand on the belt. It didn't look any happier about the situation than he did, for all that it wasn't saying anything.
"Maybe there were just the three," Go said. "And you destroyed one of them already."
"Whoever made those three can make more," Shin said firmly. "This means finding out where they came from. We have to get to the bottom of this."
Shin's we almost never included Go, when it came to investigative work; Go made a mental bet with himself whether or not Shin would actively try to include him in the rebuilt special investigation team. He was absolutely certain Shin would get permission for and then actively recruit the former members of said team, at least as a temporary unit; at least that would make accessing the Drive Pit easier.
Go glanced at Chase, who was patiently waiting in the damaged Ride Crosser. He had remained silent during the brief conversation, but now that Go was actively paying attention to him, he raised his hand in a sardonic little wave. The little smile that accompanied the wave was anything but sarcastic, though, and Go couldn't help smiling back.
"Are we going?" Chase said.
"Right." Go looked over the battlefield one more time; the area had been closed off for construction, at least, but any work that had been completed before their arrival had been undone now. A bright spot caught his eye. "Hang on," he said, and jogged over to it despite the leaden feeling still weighing down his limbs.
The brightness turned out to be part of the Roidmude's core, reflecting sunlight. Go turned it over in his hand, careful of the jagged edges. Shin was right behind him, inquisitive.
"Does it look, I don't know, weird to you?"
The core was broken into pieces, twisted by the explosion that had killed the Roidmude, but something about it still looked wrong. Go couldn't put his finger on it, but the feeling wouldn't go away. Shin shook his head. "Not particularly," he said.
"I'm going to ask Rinna and Kyu to take a look," Go said. "Mr. Belt, if you wouldn't mind looking, too…"
"I am always happy to lend my expertise to these matters," the belt said, which was a bald-faced lie. Krim was as human as the rest of them despite having downloaded his consciousness into the belt, which meant that he could be as cooperative or as uncooperative as anyone else. Go raised an eyebrow at him, but he wasn't sure that the belt registered it.
"Come on, then," Shin said, and Go picked his way back across the battlefield to Shin's car.