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It was after Goro burnt breakfast three consecutive days in a row and failed to sew a button onto his shirt that Akira nudged the metaphorical disaster snowball into motion.
“You’re so domestically challenged,” Akira sighed fondly as he fixed Goro’s mess. It was late into the evening, just past Akira’s unofficial bedtime. Goro sulked in his armchair as his boyfriend sat on the sofa, sewing his button onto his shirt with deft, quick motions that spoke of well-practiced experience.
“I am not domestically challenged,” Goro gritted out, covertly scrutinising Akira’s sewing technique to mimic later in private, “I’m inexperienced. ”
“Yet your ‘experience’ in the kitchen doesn’t stop you from burning our breakfast eggs for the hundredth time,” Akira teased playfully. He bit the thread, snapping it, and rubbed his thumb over the cheap replacement button with an air of satisfaction, “Done.”
“Cooking is different,” Goro grumbled, “But any other domestic task I can learn to do with ease .”
“‘Domestic task’, huh? Like what?” Akira glanced at him, his smile all Joker as his gaze lingered on Goro’s argyle sweater, “ Knitting?”
Goro jutted his chin out, “What’s with that tone? You think I can’t do it?”
“You just spent thirty minutes stabbing yourself in the thumb trying to sew a button,” Akira pointed out, “I don’t want to imagine the damage you’ll do with knitting needles.”
Well, fuck, okay, he had him there, but-
“Hmph. Giving up on me before I even made an attempt,” Goro murmured, leaning back in his armchair as he affected a brooding air, “Is this all that your belief in me amounts to?”
“Goro…” Akira sighed, “I do believe in you-”
“Wonderful,” Goro sat back up with a brilliant smile, “Then you will support me in my endeavour to master knitting then, yes?”
“I- what-”
“Three months,” Goro ploughed on, “I will present the fruits of my labour for your judgement. If it’s satisfactory, then that’s another point to me.”
Akira stared at him for a moment, looking a little blindsided.
“Okay,” his boyfriend finally said, “Sure. Uh. If you want?”
This was when the disaster snowball started to gain speed down its gentle slope.
Exactly two weeks after Goro’s dramatic proclamation to become a knitting expert in a ridiculously short timeframe, the disaster snowball hit its first bump in the shape of a superstition.
It began like this:
After scrolling through various wikihow articles on ‘How To Knit an Argyle Style Pattern’, Goro stumbled across a tangentially related comment about ‘the sweater curse’. It was a random statement ( knits&gritz: i used this pattern for my ex and the sweater curse struck me down for my hubris lol) , but something about it stuck to him, like a burr caught on his sleeve long after he had moved on and screwed up five more attempts at knitting argyle.
So, during his break, after stuffing his knitted shame under the sofa cushions for him to unravel later, he googled “sweater curse”.
This revealed to him an age-old urban legend widely believed amongst the knitting society called “curse of the love sweater” . Allegedly, those who decided to knit a sweater for a loved one would inevitably suffer heartbreak, their relationship rapidly deteriorating until it culminated in a permanent break up filled with bitterness and resentment.
Normally Goro would scoff at such a ridiculous urban legend, but the staggering amount of anecdotal evidence on forums, in knitting blogs, on social media: a terrifying collection of witness accounts testifying to this curse’s legitimate existence and power...
After experiencing the insanity with the Metaverse and being a supernatural hitman that targeted his victims via their heart, an innocuous superstition like a sweater curse was easy enough to believe.
But what did this mean? Was there truly something supernatural at play here? Or was it confirmation bias? A lot of people knitted, so statistically, a lot of people would experience a break up while knitting their loved one a sweater. Why sweaters of all things? Did it count if you were making it to prove a point and not necessarily as a romantic gesture?
Goro sat there, chewing over the matter, before dismissing it out of hand. A sweater curse… hah, how ridiculous. As if his and Akira’s relationship could be tried by such a pathetic curse! He wasn’t worried at all.
He went back to knitting and told himself to forget about it.
Exactly twelve hours later, lying in bed with Akira snoring into his shoulder, Goro couldn’t forget about it.
What exactly caused a sweater to initiate a break up? Was it the quality? If Akira deemed his presented sweater as unsatisfactory, would he finally realise how ill-fitting Goro was to a normal life? Akira was right: he was domestically challenged. He couldn’t cook, he couldn’t sew, he could barely fucking knit after two solid weeks of intense research, and his style of cleaning an apartment was to unleash the roomba and forget about it.
Akira handled everything: cooking, grocery shopping, cleaning, calming Goro down from his nightmares, doing the heavy-lifting on the feelings and romance side of things, being his translator to the rest of the Phantom Thieves so he stopped devouring his foot whenever they were forced to interact for Akira’s happiness - oh, god, fuck, Akira did so much and Goro did so little, the sweater curse was going to destroy their relationship.
“Fuck,” he whispered, his mind instantly strategising on how to combat this looming threat. If he denounced his sweater, would it negate the curse? Or was it already in effect? Did it gain strength the closer to completion his sweater got? Maybe he should downsize to a scarf instead.
“ Fuck,” he whispered again, a little louder, because, no, he couldn’t downsize, and he couldn’t call it quits either. Akira will ask why, and if he trotted out ‘the sweater curse will obliterate our relationship because it is so ridiculously one-sided and reliant on you not realising’ , it will have the same effect. Akira might have a moment of clarity and realise he could do so much better and - rightly - dump Goro for greener pastures.
“Fuck,” he whispered again, barely audible, because he felt clammy and sick at the idea. He could feel his heart practically smash through his sternum as his mind gleefully conjured scenarios where Akira broke up with him, each more ridiculous - but no less heartbreaking - than the last.
He had to prevent this somehow. But… how? The sweater curse was, according to its various victims, inevitable once invoked. Its approach was as deadly and looming as a glacier in the close distance, too wide to steer the ship away in time. Goro could almost hear the shrieking metal of solid ice tearing through the flimsy steel that was his and Akira’s relationship.
He couldn’t believe a fucking sweater of all things was going to be his downfall.
“Mm…? Goro?”
He flinched at Akira’s drowsy voice cutting through his morbid premonition of ships being dragged into the murky depths called ‘catastrophic heartbreak’, and shrank back against the pillows as his boyfriend pushed himself up onto an elbow to groggily squint down at him.
“You okay?” Akira murmured softly, a hushed, rumbling tone that never failed to make Goro’s tense muscles uncoil. He rested a hand over his chest, no doubt feeling Goro’s heart wildly pound beneath his warm palm, “You’re all tensed up.”
Goro was frozen, caught between a lie and a confession.
“I-” he stuttered, heat crawling up his neck. His first instinct was to snap, to retreat into his spiny shell like an affronted porcupine, because nursing wounded pride was easier than exposing his soft underbelly. Akira would take it in stride too. He was used to Goro baring his teeth at comfort, no matter how gently it was offered and that- that stopped his instinct dead in its tracks.
sweater curse, his mind hissed, and he swallowed his thorny pride down.
“...yes,” he strangled out, sitting up and forcing Akira to back up to avoid getting headbutted. He hated lying to him from a vulnerable position, “I’m fine.”
“You sure?” Akira pressed carefully, now looking a little more alert. Shit, something in his tone must’ve raised red flags in Akira’s carefully organised mental file of ‘what to watch out for when Goro is hiding stupid bullshit from me’ .
Goro mustered a smile from somewhere, “I’m sure.”
Akira squinted at him, shamelessly observing him while Goro maintained his dazzling and inscrutable Detective Prince smile. His boyfriend looked thoroughly unconvinced at his act but, thankfully, decided not to press him when a yawn threatened to escape him.
“Mmngh, well, okay…” Akira mumbled groggily, his eyelids drooping as he sunk back down against the bed, exhaustion winning out over his vague concern, “If you’re sure…”
Goro hummed and helped his boyfriend along back to sleep by tugging his fingers through his curly hair. Akira purred drowsily, and several deep, evening breaths later, was back to sleep.
Phew. Crisis averted for now.
Goro carefully extracted himself from the bed, mindful not to wake Akira up. He’d come to a decision in that short moment - he wasn’t going to let a stupid sweater curse win and tear apart his and Akira’s miraculous relationship. To negate its power, he was going to make the perfect sweater, absolutely amazing, that Akira would be in awe and swoon at his feet and not at all realise that he could do so much better than him .
or get jealous and break up with me, a pessimistic voice warbled in the back of his mind, but Goro squished that easily. That was stupid, even for his insane paranoia.
But first…
He needed to practice more with knitting.
“I think Goro’s stressed about something,” Akira told Ann exactly one month later.
“He’s always stressed about something,” Ann said, strategically arranging her dessert spread before her to make the sugar intake more efficient. Akira once again wondered how she hadn’t keeled over via diabetes yet.
“Yeah, but this time he’s…” Akira gestured vaguely, trying to find the right words. How do you explain that your boyfriend is potentially possessed by a knitting spirit and you’re seriously considering hiring an exorcist to free him from its grasp? “Being weird about it.”
“Hmm,” Ann fiddled with her fork, tapping it against her bottom lip as she reluctantly looked up from her platter of sweet scones, “It must be weird if you think it is.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Akira, you two aren’t exactly normal, ” Ann sighed, and set her fork down, “How’s he being weird?”
“He’s knitting,” Akira said solemnly.
Ann waited, and raised her eyebrows when nothing else was forthcoming.
“Okay?” she frowned, “Knitting’s… tame? I mean, not a hobby I expected him to pick up, but it’s, uh, productive? Safe?”
“No, Ann, you don’t understand,” Akira said, leaning forwards slightly; “All he’s been doing is knitting. Every day. On the hour. I think he’s even skipping sleep to knit.”
“Okay, that’s… yeah, that’s weird,” Ann admitted, “Have you asked him about it?”
“He said everything’s fine,” Akira muttered bitterly, picking at the table, “When I push, he gives me that fake smile and deflects. I thought we’d gotten past him pulling that shit…”
“Hmm…” Ann rubbed her chin in open thought, gazing at her strawberry shortcake for one long moment, “Maybe tell him this is upsetting you? Him being all… weird and secretive?”
“He’ll clam up even more if I do that,” Akira groaned.
“Have you even tried?” Ann asked dryly.
Akira fidgeted guiltily because, no, he hadn’t, but he was always too wary of treading too much into Goro’s space. Even now, after pushing through the chains of that entire mess with the Metaverse and Goro trying to murder him that one time, Akira didn’t want to rock the boat by forcing Goro to share too much. What if it ended up with him shutting him out?
“Akira,” Ann said, no doubt picking up on his anxiety, “A lot of problems in relationships can be solved with communication. Which, uh, no offence but, you two really need to work on.”
“We communicate,” Akira said sulkily.
“So why are you asking me about Goro’s problems instead of the man himself?” she asked flatly.
Akira offered her a weak shrug.
“Go talk to him,” Ann ordered, picking up her fork and even thrusting it at him, like a queen delivering her verdict, “Seriously talk to him, you big baby. You’re both adult enough to talk about your feelings without one of you jumping out of the window.”
“Have you met Goro?” Akira said disbelievingly.
“...well, I have faith you can tackle him before he runs away,” Ann amended, “Just do it. At least try.”
“Fine,” Akira sighed, “But it’s gonna go horribly.”
When Akira returned to his and Goro’s shared apartment that early evening, it was to a sight that was quickly becoming the norm: Goro curled up on the sofa, knitting needles clacking and his gaze fixated on a ‘Knitting For Dummies’ guide propped open on the coffee table. He seemed to be knitting either a pillowcase or a very square-shaped sweater.
“Hi, honey! I’m home!” Akira greeted, loudly taking his shoes off and hanging up his coat to break through whatever knitting trance his boyfriend was no doubt trapped in.
“Hm? What?” Goro glanced over after several delayed seconds, blinking a little owlishly, “Oh, hi.”
Akira waited, but when Goro returned to his project with nothing else to add, he frowned. Wow, that was cold.
Right then.
Akira walked over to his boyfriend and, before Goro could protest, snatched up the knitting book, closed it, tossed it onto the unoccupied loveseat, and stood in front of him with his hands on his hips. Goro stared up at him, bewildered.
“Goro,” Akira said, mustering his courage for the battle ahead, “We need to talk.”
“Talk? About what?” Goro’s fingers twitched around his knitting needles, his body suddenly taut with defensive, anxious energy. Akira warily eyed him. Maybe he should have confiscated those makeshift weapons off him first before starting this.
“About… this,” Akira gestured vaguely, “Your knitting. I know you’re trying hard to meet that deadline to prove you can learn a domestic skill but, Goro… you’ve gotten obsessed.”
“I’m not obsessed,” Goro lied.
Akira slowly swept his gaze over the pile of yarn that was steadily overtaking the valuable floor space of their living area, alongside uncompleted (or heavily misshapen) projects.
“... I’m dedicated?” Goro defended himself weakly when Akira looked back at him pointedly.
Akira pinched the bridge of his nose, pushing his glasses up briefly before lowering his hand, “Okay. Goro, what’s wrong?”
On automatic, Goro’s fake smile dazzled at him, “Nothing.”
“Don’t lie to me,” Akira said flatly, “What’s wrong?”
Goro faltered, clearly thrown by Akira stubbornly pushing instead of letting the matter slide. His gaze flickered from Akira to his knitting needles to the window. Akira subtly shifted to block off his escape route - he doubted Goro would go for it but, fuck, he might, actually. This was Goro. He breathed melodrama.
“Goro,” Akira softened his tone, “Sweetheart-”
“Don’t- sweetheart me,” Goro snapped, his cheeks turning pink.
Akira raised an eyebrow, “Darling.”
“No.”
“My love.”
Goro was squirming in place, “Ergh, stop.”
“Babe, honey pot, booboo bear-”
“Oh god, fine! Just shut up!” Goro threw his knitting project at him, and Akira fumbled to catch it before he ended up getting skewered by the needles, “We’re cursed!”
“We’re- what?” Akira stared in disbelief as Goro, apparently realising what he just blurted, hid his crimson face behind his hands, curled up into an embarrassed ball on the sofa, “We’re cursed? Since when?”
“Uuuuugh… let me start again,” Goro mumbled into his palms, his shoulders drawing up to his ears as he hunched into himself, “When I accepted the knitting challenge, I accidentally invoked the sweater curse. So now I have to… to be good enough to… thwart it…”
Akira blinked very slowly.
“Sweater curse,” he repeated, wondering if Futaba had been sending Goro weird horror films again, “Um...”
“You don’t believe in it,” Goro groaned, and lowered his hands to pin Akira down with a stubborn, wild-eyed glare, “But it exists! Within the knitting community, there is a lot of anecdotal evidence that supports it exists in some way, even if its cause is more mundane than supernatural!”
“Uh,” Akira said.
“So, obviously, a poorly done sweater causes a collapse in the relationship. That means if I want to repel the curse’s effects I need to-”
“Goro, wait, hold on,” Akira set aside the knitting he’d half-forgotten about and carefully perched on the edge of the coffee table, “You’re trying to knit a perfect sweater so a, uh, sweater curse won’t end our relationship?”
Goro stared at him.
“...yes,” he said, “That’s it exactly.”
Well.
Akira rubbed a hand over his mouth, forcing himself not to visibly react. He never would’ve thought Goro of all people would buy so deeply into superstition, but Akira knew to laugh at it would just serve to make Goro defensive and angry. So, sweater curse. Goro believed it was real. Okay then. In which case, Akira will act as if it was real too.
“Well,” Akira started, reconsidered his next words, and tried again, “Even if you give me a really ugly sweater, I’ll still wear it.”
Goro, strangely, did not seem reassured, “You’re already expecting me to fail?”
“No,” Akira quickly said, “No, I just mean, uh, I don’t… mind? If it’s not perfect? You don’t need to kill yourself to make a perfect sweater to, um, appease the… curse.”
Goro scrutinised him closely, frowning intently, “So, if I gave you a low-quality sweater…”
“I will not break up with you over it,” Akira said, a little alarmed he even had to say this, “You tried to kill me, Goro. If I can overlook that, I can overlook an ugly sweater.”
Somehow, Goro seemed to think the ugly sweater was a greater sin than the attempted murder, “Hmm.”
“How about this?” Akira said eagerly, suddenly experiencing a brilliant epiphany, “What if we both knit a sweater for each other?”
Goro looked worried, “Do you know how to knit?”
“I’m absolutely pants at it,” Akira admitted shamelessly, “So, we’ll both knit each other horrible, godawful sweaters and negate the curse, because double negatives always cancel each other out.”
There was a very long pause as Goro fed this bewildering logic through the Rube Goldberg machine that was his brain, blinking very slowly at Akira with an expression caught somewhere between disbelief and enlightenment. It was a very weird expression, to be honest.
“...it has to be recognisable as a sweater,” Goro said slowly, “You can’t just knit something half-assed and claim it is one. The curse will know.”
“Sure,” and, because Akira was a genius, he added slyly, “So, whoever makes the ugliest sweater wins.”
Goro’s eyes flashed.
“You’ll find I’m far ahead of you in that respect,” he sneered, his crippling fears of knitting inadequacy backflipping into pride at his ineptitude, “Look at all this! These attempts are the ugliest pieces of shit ever conceived!”
“I could do worse.”
“Prove it.”
So Akira, who had never knitted a day in his life and was very much hoping he wouldn’t discover he had an innate talent for it like with darts or billiards, picked up the knitting project Goro threw at him earlier and roughly worked out the needles. He didn’t break eye contact with Goro once, and almost stabbed himself in the hand because of it.
There was a strange feeling brewing in him, as he fumbled his way through knitting beneath Goro’s hawkish gaze, one that had stepped back from the situation and was objectively examining this whole ridiculous situation.
The curse was stupid, and Akira was fairly certain that Goro knew the curse was stupid. Yet he fixated on it, the whole ‘it will destroy your relationship’ and freaked out about it. It was nice to know that Goro felt so strongly about Akira that he did ridiculous things to try and keep it alive, but… that was also deeply concerning. It meant he had some deeply entrenched insecurities about their relationship still, and instead of talking to Akira about them, projected onto insane superstitions and used them as a means to rationalise and confront these insecurities in a way that he felt comfortable with.
(“A lot of problems in relationships can be solved with communication. Which, uh, no offence but, you two really need to work on.”)
Goddammit Ann. He hated it when she was right.
“I’m kind of offended, you know,” Akira said mildly, as his fingers got tangled up in yarn.
Goro frowned, a cute, puzzled little expression as his gaze lifted from Akira’s mangled attempt at… whatever he was trying to make, “Why?”
“That you think my feelings for you are so shallow that a shitty sweater would be a dealbreaker,” Akira said, still holding that mild tone. He was genuine, he was deeply insulted, but revealing that wouldn’t help, “Sweetheart, you wear blue argyle in heat waves. If I somehow find that adorable, then nothing phases me.”
Instead of leaping to his fashion choices’ defence, Goro’s expression closed off a little, “Well, perhaps you feel… committed.”
What?
Akira stared at him, bewildered, “Well, yes? We’re in a relationship? Commitment is kind of important for that.”
“No- yes, of course, I mean…” Goro faltered. In that moment, Akira witnessed an absolute rarity: Goro being vulnerable. It was in the way he held himself, the way his gaze lowered, long, dark eyelashes hiding his eyes from view as he fidgeted with his wrist, looking for the hem of a glove that was no longer there. A tic he picked up from Akira’s old Metaverse habit.
“You mean…?” Akira prompted softly.
“You have… put a lot of time in me,” Goro gritted out, his cheeks flushing as he glowered at the floor, “And, a lot of effort. Time and effort I- I poorly reciprocate, what with having the emotional intelligence of a fucking thimble and- and the ability to- to do this shit. You’d- I mean, when you put in a lot of effort into a lost cause like that, you feel an- obligation, to follow through, and… I understand that is- a possibility. With us.”
Akira quietly absorbed that.
“You’re not a lost cause,” Akira finally said, “And I’m not obligated.”
Goro laughed bitterly, “Of course you’d say that.”
“Because it’s true,” Akira said firmly, “Goro, if you reciprocated like me, I’d think you were replaced by a pod person. I like taking care of you, and I like you being kinda sassy and fussy about it. I’m a bit of a masochist and enjoy difficult cases, if you haven’t noticed yet.”
Goro looked like he wasn’t sure how to react to his heartfelt confession being replied with ‘you being kinda sassy and fussy’, staring at Akira with pure, utter bewilderment. Like he couldn’t comprehend that Akira genuinely liked him and wasn’t… apparently fucking pretending so he didn’t waste an investment? Honestly, Akira had no idea what was going through his brain. Pod Person Goro would be more comprehensible than him.
So, Akira stared right into his eyes and said the forbidden words: “I love you, you idiot.”
Goro went absolutely scarlet.
“You- just- just knit,” Goro growled, crossing his arms and stubbornly trying not to look like his heart had done a pathetic little backflip in his chest.
“No, I think I need to really hammer it home,” Akira said with a ruthless grin, all teeth, “I love you from the very bottom of my heart-”
“Ergh.”
“-with all of my soul and until the end of time. No sweater curse could ever hope to sever our-”
“Stop,” Goro rasped, hiding his face behind his hands, “Stop.”
Akira kindly stopped and gave his boyfriend a moment to compose himself, returning to his knitting. A comfortable silence fell on them, filled only with the uneven clacking of his knitting needles. Then;
“I… maybe, I… overreacted,” Goro admitted in a quiet murmur, “A bit.”
“A bit,” Akira said agreeably, “I think I got my fingers tangled.”
“What? Oh for- come here.”
Goro helped free Akira from the yarn, and he did it with a small, hesitant smile, like he was just realising that his relationship didn’t hinge on his competency in a random hobby and he could actually… not worry about Akira apparently dumping him for knitting a really shit sweater.
Maybe they should do this communication thing more often.
“I have no clue what I’m doing,” Akira said, “I don’t think I could even knit a sweater, shit or otherwise.”
“Let me show you the basics,” Goro sighed, “I’m confident in that at least.”
Two months later, they both presented each other with equally ugly sweaters and as expected, their relationship did not implode on itself.