Neither hide nor hair of a Roidmude showed itself over the next several days, much to Go's frustration. It wasn't that he was bored, specifically; the temp agency kept sending work his way, and he didn't really want to refuse, given the uncertainty of the job in general. Go could have used some sort of distraction, though. Chase was suddenly consistently underfoot; he appeared to have given up his string of part-time jobs in favor of lurking in Go's immediate vicinity. The staff at the temp agency started making jokes about Go's new assistant the third time he ran into one or more of them, and Go tried to laugh it off.
Chase, for his part, was somehow even more awkward than usual. He kept staring, and Go didn't know what to do about it. His crush – his inappropriate infatuation – wasn't going away, and having Chase around all the time was just making it worse. Chase kept giving him looks that were probably expressionless but that Go couldn't help but read as expectant no matter how much he told himself to respect his friend's boundaries. Not knowing what had precipitated Chase's abrupt change in behavior was a problem with a relatively simple solution. Even understanding that, every time Go thought about asking Chase what he was doing, a dim memory that he couldn't quite grasp ignited a feeling of dread, and he retreated from the impulse to speak.
It was almost a relief to feel the rumblings of an earthquake, even as the shaking got worse. The papers covering Go's kitchen table slid out of their neat stacks and the cord holding the light hanging from the ceiling creaked in protest as it swayed back and forth. Go pulled his phone out of his pocket, texting Shin. Roidmude?
No, Shin texted back. Or at least there's no heavy acceleration field detected.
No heavy acceleration field had been detected the last time a Roidmude had shown up either, which meant the lack of one was no confirmation one way or the other.
The epicenter is west, Shin texted. It looks like a natural phenomenon.
Go tapped his fingernail against the side of his phone. I should go take a look, just in case, he sent back. If nothing else, it would get him out of Tokyo. Maybe a change of scenery would help him re-center himself and let him work through his improper feelings. Maybe some time away from Chase would make him stop watching Go with that unreadable expression. Go didn't hold out much hope on the latter score, but at least he'd be better able to deal with it.
The shaking finally stopped, and Go flipped on the news. The epicenter of the quake had been farther west than he'd thought, from Shin's brief comment, and the earthquake had been worse than it had seemed. Tokyo had just gotten the edges, but a small town on the other side of Mt. Fuji had been all but leveled. The volcano itself hadn't reacted, although Go couldn't help but wonder if an eruption was perhaps imminent. It was easy to forget that Mt. Fuji was technically an active volcano, even if it had been three centuries since it had last decided to bless the surrounding area with streams of molten rock.
Go packed what little he'd need on a possible overnight trip as he listened to the news with half an ear; he wasn't the only one who'd wondered about volcanic activity, apparently, given the hastily thrown together interviews with alleged experts. Most of what was said boiled down, as far as Go could tell, to we'll have to wait and see. Not particularly useful, Go thought, and threw his bag over his shoulder.
Chase materialized at the front door before Go so much as got his shoes on. "Where are you going?" he asked.
"Shin thinks there might be some Roidmude involvement at the epicenter of the earthquake," Go said. His shoes were giving him trouble, but he finally got his feet in them. His hand was on the doorknob when Chase spoke again.
"Was there a heavy acceleration field?"
"No." Go sighed. "But there wasn't last time, either, so I'm going to see if there's anything there." The trip out would take long enough, on his bike, that even if Roidmudes had been involved, they were likely to be long gone by the time he arrived. He was going to go anyway, just in case there was something to find.
"I'll come with you." Chase apparently didn't feel as though he had to pack anything; he simply slipped his feet into his shoes, crowding far too close to Go in the narrow entryway for either comfort or Go's sanity.
"I'll call you if there's something," Go said. He couldn't clear his head with Chase around; he wasn't sure if he could do it with Chase somewhere else, but he wouldn't know until he tried.
"You don't want me with you?" Chase said, and Go's traitorous mind imbued the question with another meaning entirely.
"I always want you with me," he said before he could stop the words from slipping out, and then had to resist the urge to bang his head against the door. "I mean, it's probably nothing, and there's no point in wasting your time, too." The words kept coming, once he'd started talking. "If there's nothing Roidmude-related, I can at least get some photographs." He clenched his jaw shut.
"I would like to accompany you," Chase said, and Go gave up.
"We might be staying overnight," he said, and then had to wait as Chase took his shoes back off to go collect a toothbrush and whatever else he decided he might need.
The drive, at least, wasn't awkward. They couldn't speak to each other in any case, and the nonverbal communication indicating route and direction went as smoothly as Go could have wanted. They reached the disaster area in surprisingly good time, but Go felt their luck run out as they immediately ran into someone with actual authority. Not that keeping disaster tourists out of a potentially dangerous area wasn't necessary, it was just that Go didn't technically have the authority to be wandering into said disaster area, even as a consultant for the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department, and the investigation he needed to conduct made him look like a disaster tourist to the outside eye.
"Are you part of the volunteer effort?" the man said, and Go could see Chase blink.
"I would like to register as part of the volunteer effort," he said, and while he was getting directions on how to be useful, Go snuck off.
There was no sign of anything Roidmude related; Go had a pretty solid idea of visual identifying marks, and none of them were in evidence. He managed to avoid the actual relief personnel during his fruitless search, eventually coming back to the edge of the area with nothing to show except the knowledge that their new Roidmudes weren't causing earthquakes. The ground still shook gently under his feet from time to time, and Go cast a wary glance at the silhouette of Mt. Fuji every time it did, but no lava appeared to be forthcoming.
"You're late," Chase said, materializing at his elbow.
"What?" It was dark and getting colder, and Go was ready to drive back to Tokyo. Chase had apparently not only signed himself up for volunteer duty, he'd taken the liberty of writing Go's name down as well. "Why?" Go asked. He'd gotten a number of potentially usable photos out of his exploration, which did nothing to make him look like something other than a disaster tourist, so maybe Chase had had a point after all.
"To explain your presence," Chase said, which was how Go found himself sorting supplies for the remainder of the evening. Chase, at least, was nowhere to be seen. Go didn't think it helped, but he threw himself into concentrating on the task in front of him. By the time he was released, he felt calmer than he had in days; he finally felt the first stirrings of optimism that he and Chase were going to be okay. He wasn't going to screw it up.
Finding Chase took longer than Go had anticipated; he eventually found him carrying a full bag labeled Biohazard toward a marked bin. Go raised his eyebrows as Chase threw the bag inside and then went to carefully wash his hands. "You finished?" Go asked.
"Yes." Chase dried his hands thoroughly and waved goodbye to someone in a uniform.
"Are they expecting you back tomorrow?" Go asked. If they were, he was leaving Chase there; no one was expecting him, and he had other work to do. Or at least, he had the obligation to be available in case of Roidmude activity.
"No," Chase said. "We can leave." He didn't ask if Go had found anything; Go supposed that Chase assumed Go would have told him. It was a fair assumption to make.
Go found himself not wanting to make the long drive back to Tokyo in the middle of the night, but they didn't have much of a choice; there was nowhere nearby enough for them to stay, given the people who had evacuated and those who had shown up for relief efforts. It was with a profound sense of relief that he parked his bike underneath his apartment building, Chase pulling in next to him. Go was chilled to the bone, his fingers uncooperative as he struggled with both turning the bike off and then getting his key into the lock on the front door.
Chase gently took the keys out of his hands after Go's second failed attempt, unlocking the door. "You're cold," he said, unnecessarily.
"It's winter," Go muttered. He hadn't anticipated driving in the middle of the night.
Chase herded him inside, which wasn't much warmer than outside, and Go made a beeline straight for the bedroom. He didn't get more than two steps down the hallway before Chase nudged him toward the bath. "You'll warm up better," he said. Go was exhausted, on top of being cold, and briefly weighed the pros and cons of arguing with Chase before taking the path of least resistance.
Stripping to wash before climbing into the bath almost made him rethink his position; it was colder once he was wet, no matter how warm the water was, but sinking into the hot water felt amazing. "You're right," he called through the closed door, the cold at his core finally melting away. Go stayed in the water long enough for it to begin to cool off before climbing out. The chill hadn't left the air, but it didn't bother him as he dried off and pulled on his pajamas.
Chase, lurking outside the door with a steaming mug in hand, was another matter. "I have to talk to you," he said.
"Can it wait until morning?" Go asked, but Chase's face fell. "Okay, okay, let's talk."
The kotatsu had been turned on while he was getting warm, and Go noticed that Chase had apparently washed and changed. He felt a pang of guilt for taking up so much time in the bath when Chase had clearly wanted to get clean as well. Chase didn't seem to mind, though; he put the mug in front of Go and wriggled underneath the kotatsu next to him.
Go wrapped his hands around the mug; it smelled like tea. "Go ahead," he said, when Chase just sat there looking at him. He smelled like soap, and Go tightened his grip on the mug. Stop that, he told himself.
"Why is it inappropriate for men to be attracted to men?" Chase asked, and Go was suddenly glad that he hadn't actually tried to drink the tea. He would have choked on it or spit it out.
"What?" he said, having nearly choked anyway.
"You said good boys don't want to screw other boys," Chase said, mimicking Go's inflections perfectly. Part of the extremely vague memory of that conversation after the Special Investigation Team's karaoke night, when he'd been too drunk to stand up straight, clarified itself in Go's head. It dragged the sense of dread right along with it, and Go swallowed hard. Apparently he'd talked to Chase about things better left unsaid, and prompted Chase into hovering around him with expectations Go couldn't in good conscience even think about meeting. "I don't understand."
"It's just," Go said, and the words stuck in his throat. "It's just not supposed to be done," he said, finally. "You can mess around with other guys, if you want, but then you grow up and get married and have kids. It's how things work." The irony of Go being the individual in the conversation attempting to extoll the virtues of social compliance was not lost on him; he just didn't want to make things more difficult for Chase. A lack of heteronormativity would make things more difficult for Chase.
Chase didn't answer, just kept looking at him. Go scrubbed his hands through his hair.
"You just don't do it," he said, unable to come up with a better reason.
"But if you love someone," Chase said, frowning. "Sometimes it's wrong to love someone?"
"I am not the right person to talk to you about this," Go muttered. He wasn't trying to be heard, but the words slipped out before he could stop them. "Look, you love your friends, right? And your family," he said in a louder voice, forestalling whatever Chase might have tried to interject. "That's okay, that's good, but you can't – you can't want to fuck the wrong people."
"Wrong?" Chase repeated.
"Like." Go floundered, searching for some kind of example, any kind of example to demonstrate that there were socially right and wrong ways to handle attraction. He couldn't think of anything. "The wrong people," he said again, helplessly. "It just isn't okay."
Chase tilted his head to the side. "I still do not understand what constitutes the wrong people," he said. "If everyone involved wants the same thing, why are there sometimes problems?" He paused. "Unless romantic relationships are more involved with the surrounding population than I had been led to believe."
Somehow the conversation had gotten away from Go entirely, and he wasn't sure how. "No, it's – no, that's not what I meant." He rubbed his eyes. "Look, it's not accepted, okay? It makes things harder. People don't like it. They don't react well. There are consequences. You lose friends. Some people lose their families." His throat closed off; he didn't think his sister knew about him. He didn't think Shin knew. Go had tried very hard, once back in Japan, to not let that part of him out.
"You think Kiriko would reject you," Chase said, with something like dawning realization. "And Shinnosuke."
"I don't want that to happen to you," Go said.
"Your sister loves you," Chase said. He was leaning toward Go, ever so slightly, and Go wanted so badly to close the distance between the two of them. "I don't think she would stop because of an abstract idea."
"No, she would just be horrified and disappointed and never want to see me again." It wasn't quite his worst fear, but it was close. Go stared into his mug of cooling tea and then lifted it almost blindly to his mouth; it was less that he wanted to drink and more that he needed a barrier between himself and Chase's quietly inquisitive eyes.
"You are very difficult to understand sometimes," Chase said, after a long moment, and Go nearly choked.
"Me," he said, when he'd gotten his breath back.
"People," Chase clarified, and eyed him with the same lack of expression. "Why did you choose to like other men, instead of women?"
Go choked all over again, without the excuse of the tea, and the coughing fit that followed had Chase staring at him in consternation. "What?" he finally got out, throat raw. "What do you mean, choose?"
Chase blinked. "I did not think it was a difficult question," he said, voice rising at the end just enough to sound uncertain.
"It wasn't something I chose," Go said. "It just happened. You don't pick who you like."
"Then I don't understand why it should be wrong," Chase said, with an undertone of very real frustration.
Go gave up. He opened his mouth to tell Chase that there wasn't any other way to explain it, if Chase didn't get it, but Chase apparently wasn't finished speaking.
"How do you know if you like someone?" Chase asked.
He's not trying to make things worse, Go thought distantly, but the voice of reason was drowned out by the much louder sense of hurt and betrayal. Even if Chase had zero obligation to return his feelings, and no matter that Go desperately wanted Chase to be happy, there was still that edge of raw pain. "You," he said, and cleared his throat. Chase didn't know how much it hurt, for him to ask that question.
"I thought I liked your sister," Chase said, eyes boring into Go's skull.
Go was very familiar with that particular portion of Chase's learning curve; he had not been happy about it. He gritted his teeth now, determined not to say anything that he would regret.
"What I feel about you is different," Chase said, still staring at him intently. Expectantly. "And I don't know what it is."
No, Go thought. I can't – I won't be an experiment. It rang hollow, though, and he knew that if Chase wanted to use him to figure out the finer points of attraction, he would let him do it. It would break Go's heart, but he would take it, if it meant not sending Chase into the dog-eat-dog jungle wasteland of trying to have a same-sex relationship in the arena of general society. It occurred to Go that his internal metaphors were jumbled, and also that he'd completely missed whatever else Chase had just said.
"Are you listening?" Chase frowned.
"Of course I'm listening," Go snapped, and Chase's eyes narrowed. Go ignored it, taking a deep breath and forcing the words out. "You don't want me," he said. "If you want to know what love is, you should find a –" He couldn't make himself say it.
"But how do I know?" Chase pressed. Go couldn't take it anymore; the stress and exhaustion and the ridiculously long day and the way Chase kept leaning toward him drowned out what was left of his better judgment.
"If you don't want me to do this, tell me to stop," he said, and reached. Go cupped Chase's cheek in one hand and drew him in closer, so slowly that it felt like a torturous eternity.
"I don't want you to stop," Chase whispered, and Go surged forward. Chase's lips were soft, smooth underneath his, and this time he wasn't frozen, statue-like. His mouth opened, willingly, and it was a long moment before Go pulled back, breathing hard.
"That's," he said, and words failed him. "That's how you know," he said, lamely. "If you liked it, that's how you know."
"My initial impression is very positive." Chase wasn't quite as calm and collected as his words might have implied; Go could see that his pupils were dilated, even if Chase's breathing was perfectly even. "But I think I might need further data."
Go opened his mouth to tell Chase to where he could put his request for further data and caught the barest hint of a smirk playing at the edge of Chase's mouth. "You little bastard, where did you learn to be sarcastic," he said, and leaned forward again. He took it more slowly, this time, letting Chase set the tone and pace.
The thud of the floor hitting his shoulderblades jarred Go out of the half-trance he'd fallen into, with Chase straddling his hips and biting far too gently at the base of his throat.
"Wait," Go said, although it felt like crawling across ground glass. "Wait."
Chase sat up, the redistribution of his weight putting exactly the right kind of pressure on exactly the wrong spot, and Go couldn't help the groan of pleasure. "Am I doing something wrong?"
"No, you, fuck, you're doing everything right," Go said, once his vision had stopped whiting out around the edges. "That's why you have to stop." This was his last shred of self-control, and he was clinging to it with just as much desperation as he was holding onto Chase's hips; if Chase had been human, he would have bruised, Go thought distantly.
"I don't follow," Chase said, looking down at him quizzically, and even from that angle, he was beautiful.
"You – you're new to all of this," Go said. "I'm not going to take advantage of you." Every other part of him was screaming in frustration, but he couldn't push Chase into doing something he wasn't ready for. The part of his brain that didn't care what his rational mind wanted pointed out that Chase was participating just as enthusiastically, with all tangible signs of enjoyment. Go silently told it to shut the fuck up.
Chase paused. "You mean sex in general or sex with a man?" he asked.
"What?" Go said cleverly, unable to come up with a more coherent response.
Chase frowned at him. "I am not entirely certain, but this feels very familiar. Although I believe my previous partner was a woman."
"What? When?" Go pushed himself up on one elbow, trying to even the playing field just a little. Ridiculously, even having a conversation about Chase's possible hypothetical ex wasn't putting a damper on anything.
"Is it customary to have a conversation about previous sexual partners during –"
"No," Go said, dropping back to the floor and burying his face in his hands. "It's a huge faux pas." He was inordinately proud of himself for remembering the word, and he was going to hold on to that small feeling of victory as an anchor against everything else.
"I see." Chase didn't say anything else, and Go finally peeked out between his fingers. Chase was watching him, with a definite look of uncertainty. "Do you want to stop?" he said.
"No," Go said. "I absolutely do not want to stop."
"Neither do I." Chase didn't quite smile, but it was close enough. "I think we should continue."
"Then get back down here," Go said, and Chase willingly obliged.
Go woke up alone, in his own bed with the light coming from the wrong direction. The clock told him it was late afternoon, his stomach that it was empty, and when he stood upright, the cold air hitting his entirely bare skin told him he was an idiot. He cursed, searching for clean clothes and pulling on the first things he found. He vaguely remembered cleaning up, but not crawling into bed.
Chase wasn't anywhere to be found in the apartment, not even on the balcony, but there was water and a measure of coffee grounds in the coffee maker. Clouds scudded through the weak sunlight outside, breaking up the pale blue late February sky and promising snow at best and cold rain at worst. The quilt was neatly arranged around the kotatsu, but the heater itself was off.
"Fire hazard," Go muttered, even though leaving the heater on unattended probably wouldn't have any ill effects. Probably. He started the coffee maker, even if caffeine so late in the day would make it harder to sleep later, and found himself smiling at nothing. "Come on, Shijima, pull yourself together," he muttered, but the smile stuck with him.
Even the prospect of not having quite enough work lined up – and nothing for the next several days, except for what he'd gotten from the earthquake – and the headache of the new Roidmude agenda combined weren't enough to quell the warm little bubble in the center of his chest. Go sipped his coffee black and started in on the previous day's shots.
The scant daylight that had been remaining when he woke was long gone by the time Go sent what he had to his editor and rinsed out the now-dry coffee pot, but Chase was still nowhere to be seen. A small thread of doubt wound itself through Go's mind, edging out the warmth that had stayed with him and replacing it with the beginnings of bitter disappointment.
A shrill beep from Go's phone startled him badly enough that he nearly tripped over nothing, and he fished it out from underneath the re-organized stack of papers on the kitchen table. Shin was asking if he'd found anything the previous day, and with a frisson of guilt to go along with his disappointment, Go realized he hadn't kept the other man updated.
No sign of Roidmude activity, he texted back, sitting down in the chair he wasn't using as a makeshift extension of the table. Just an earthquake.
Shin sent back a frowny face. Go sent him a shrug. Keep your eyes open, Shin sent, which rated a thumbs-up rather than actual words in reply. Go was about to put his phone back on the table when a second unread text caught his attention. Chase had sent him a string of heart-marks, which somehow managed to infuse themselves with Chase's serious stoicism, and chased away the stirrings of doubt. Go smiled and sent back his own string of glitter hearts.
The ping of another incoming text made him smile, until he saw it was from Shin, and not Chase, and Go's first reaction was to roll his eyes at it. Shin was terrible at texting etiquette, even though he really shouldn't have been; Go's last text clearly hadn't required a reply, and yet here one was. The content of the text had him on his feet and rushing toward the door – the two Roidmudes they hadn't defeated were back.
Go skidded down the stairs, sending a text to Chase and one to Shin to call Chase before stuffing his helmet over his head and throwing himself onto the Ride Macher. The Ride Chaser wasn't in its usual spot, he noted absently, but at least that meant Chase had transportation if he got the text in time. The sky above the brightly lit streets was dim, stars blotted out by the golden fog of the streetlights, except for abrupt strips of clouds reflecting a dizzying pale orange. It looked warm, belying the chill bite of the wind.
The location Shin had sent would have been easy to find even if Go hadn't known where it was; the Roidmudes were just as loud as they had been the last time, and a fireball blossomed brilliantly just as Go reached the next street over. "No, dammit," he muttered, and tried to go faster.
His fears were unfounded; Shin was still on his feet and fighting, still in his base armored form but playing the smaller, faster Roidmude off its hulking counterpart for all he was worth. Go didn't bother stopping; he slammed the shift car into his belt while he was tearing down the road, screaming the transformation phrase into the aftermath of the explosion.
The suit settled over him, light as a feather and with a feeling of dancing on air. Go wrenched the Ride Macher around, pointed it at the larger Roidmude, and gunned it. The Roidmude ducked to the side at the last fraction of a second, but Go was ready. He spun the Zenrin Striker and slammed the Shooter into the Roidmude's midsection, using the impact to swing the Ride Macher to the side and bleed its momentum off into a shuddering halt. The Roidmude skidded across the ground, cracking a telephone pole in half.
Trusting Shin to take care of the smaller Roidmude, Go launched himself off the Ride Macher and flipped over the downed Roidmude, firing twice before he hit the ground in a crouch on its other side. "You're not getting away from me again!"
The obviously repaired shoulder joint proved that this was the same Roidmude that had escaped the last time; Go had tried to beat it to death with its own arm, but it was ridiculously well constructed. Even now, it was ponderously getting up, sparks from the broken wires overhead raining down over its head and shoulders.
"Watch out," Shin warned, but Go could see the wires moving as if in slow motion. Even Shin was moving more slowly than he had the last time.
Go laughed. "Tracking, terminating, both done at mach speed!" he shouted at the Roidmude. "Kamen Rider Mach!" Annoyingly, it didn't seem to be paying attention. Go felt like he could run circles around it. "Too slow," he taunted it, when it reached for him and missed by meters.
Firing the Zenrin Shooter straight up and hitting the Boost Igniter once sent a rain of blaster fire toward the Roidmude, but Go saw almost too late that one of the firebursts was headed straight for Drive. He darted forward, grabbing Shin around the waist and pulling him out of the line of fire just barely in time. The fireburst crashed into the ground just in front of Drive's opponent instead, sending it stumbling it backwards.
Go absorbed the momentum of his last-second dodge, leaving Shin on his feet and coming up on one knee. "You okay?" he asked.
"I'm fine, are you okay?" Shin asked, sounding dazed, words drawn out just a little too much.
"No problem," Go returned in English, for no other reason than he felt like it, and by that time his Roidmude had gotten its wits together. It was charging toward him, and Go had no desire to find out what would happen if it managed to hit him. He wouldn't get off as lightly as he had last time, he was sure. Shin was stalking his opponent again, and Go suddenly knew exactly how to get his Roidmude to go down and stay there.
It was almost on top of him, but Go was nothing if not the master of perfect timing. He leapt, using the Roidmude's raised knee as it started to take the final step as a springboard to catch it one-handed by the jaw and land on its shoulders with the Zenrin Shooter still in the other hand.
"Yippee ki yay, motherfucker," he said, quoting something he barely remembered, and fired the Zenrin Shooter straight into the back of the Roidmude's neck. The Roidmude staggered but didn't fall; Go fired again, and again, and the Roidmude's questing hands grabbed him and flung him into a wall. The Zenrin Shooter skittered away and Go barely managed to turn his momentum into a controlled roll. He came to his feet bare millimeters from the Roidmude's uncoordinated fist smashing the wall into dust.
"Try that again," he muttered, diving toward his weapon. The roar of a motorcycle engine, barely audible over the sound of the falling rubble, announced Chase's arrival on the field just as Go's fingers brushed against the Zenrin Shooter.