Archive of Our Own ^beta

Eiji has always had nightmares. The only difference between himself and Ash is that where Ash’s nightmares end with tangled sheets, shouted words and heaving gasps, Eiji’s bouts of restlessness are quiet. After that, he just… wakes up. Even if the nightmares are so visceral he can still taste the iron on his tongue, or feel the catch in his lungs where he had lost his breath mid-dream, he doesn’t wake up in a fit of cold sweat or with a yell or a name on his lips. He just wakes up.

Eiji’s eyes slide open. The clock reads 3:45. It’s late, or early, depending on how you look at it. The normal sleep-induced heaviness in his limbs is replaced by the white-hot tension that fear easily tucks between the strands of his muscles. He thinks about his nightmare, how viscerally it stays with him even now, how part of him wished he had thrashed and sobbed out names if only to have a moment of selfishness. His ankle aches with the oncoming storm and the room illuminates with far-off lightning. His mind drifts as his eyes, blurry and tired, scan the white ceiling above him. In all his panic and terror, he is silent.

Too many nights, he thinks, of waking as a child and clambering down the hallway only to find his mother’s bedroom empty. His father, at the time, hospitalized for yellowing skin and a sudden acute case of kidney failure, eventually managed, was also absent.

The yellowness never went away. Neither did his father’s drinking problem.

His mother was always away. Eiji was often feeding his sister packaged snacks or cut up fruit in between track exercises.

Tonight is no different, but this time the apartment isn’t empty. Ash sleeps, soundlessly, to his right. His body is warm in the centimeters that separate them. The heat is rolling off him in waves. He’s always by the door, always in direct sight of the always-closed curtains. A part of them is cracked open tonight, Ash’s paranoia got the better of him, and the cotton’s deep blue reminds Eiji of the sea, parted, by the might of a demi-God. A prophet.

A leopard straining for a view and not finding it this low to the ground.

Thunder rolls like a creaking floorboard far off. His heartbeat stutters and pounds in tandem to its cadence. It’s a horrid, crackling thing that shatters like the sounds above his head. Finding that he can move, that the darkness of his dreams hasn’t immured him in his body with hooks and needles, Eiji shifts. He turns towards the part in the curtains and wishes he could crack the windows beyond, smell the humidity, relish in the sound of nighttime rain. Summer storms over the seas were common in Izumo. They brought a heavier cloud of saltwater in through the propped windows and Eiji would turn towards them like a flower begging for sunlight, as if he were being drawn to something bigger than him.

It’s easy now to think that he was being drawn to New York, drawn to Ash. Drawn to this immeasurable, untouchable, yet entirely visceral, living thing between them.

He counts the beats when the thunder fades to see how far off the storm is. He remembers doing this with his sister, something he’d gotten from his grandmother.

Count with me, he’d say to her when she’d run, crying, into his room at night. We’ll count until you fall asleep.

Eiji slides his gaze, hesitantly, as if that alone would wake the beast that slept with one eye open in Ash’s chest, to his companion. He wonders if he could sneak by him to help calm the pounding in his chest with some tea. He counts the thunder and watches the rise and fall of Ash's chest.

The thunder returns on four, Ash’s chest levels out at six, and the rain begins in another two.

Eiji counts as the thunder fades again and decides that the next rumble would cover the creaking of the bed and the shuffle of his feet on the floorboards. He counts to three and a half before the thunder returns and peels the blanket off his overheated body, rising and stepping as light as he’s seen Ash step. His athleticism may not have left him as swift-footed as Ash, but he could pull it off in a pinch.

Besides, Ash deserves an uninterrupted sleep. He’s had so little of it recently. He’s had so little of it, period.

He leaves a trace, though, in case Ash decides to wake. He leaves the blankets rumpled as if he had gotten up, plucks his phone from the charger (if he had been taken, it would remain), and leaves the door open enough for his body to slide through. He flicks a lamp on in the hallway, watches behind him as it slithers through the crack he left and covers Ash’s hidden feet in fire.

Pyrisous, his mind supplies. Swift-footed, glorious. A beauty that lingers, Godlike, in a mortal’s flesh.

The Iliad's text flashes through his disoriented mind and settles heavy in his chest.

If he were braver, he thinks, turning away from their shared bedroom, their separate beds, unused tonight, in this too big apartment, he would take up Ash’s revolver and wage war himself. He’d don Ash’s red converse, slide on that red and black bomber jacket he favors even now and take Ash’s place.

A true companion to a mighty warrior.

A coward, though, is what he truly is.

He counts again as the thunder drifts off.

The light from the hallway is enough to illuminate part of the kitchen, enough for him to pull the wrought-iron kettle from its spot on the countertop beneath the cabinets and place it onto the burner. It’s still half-filled with water from his tea earlier. He pulls the lighter near it along, too, and turns the gas on without igniting the spark hidden in the belly of the stove. He lights the lighter and presses the flame into the pouring gas, igniting it with a pitiful excuse for a roar. It singes his knuckles and he finds an odd comfort in it. He squints at this new addition to his night, watching the blue of the flame grow sharper and the gas that fuels it hiss as the rain cascades down against the windows in a light sheet, threatening violence later.

Fire and water. Perhaps it’s too cliché for his emotional state, his fraying self-control.

Longer than last, a full eight seconds, the thunder cracks overhead, a booming sound that kickstarts Eiji’s heart back into overdrive. He snaps his head behind him, expecting Ash’s figure to come careening down the hallway with Eiji’s name rising from his lips like a sinner desperate for sanctuary.

Chest tight, he waits another six seconds and is pleasantly surprised, despite his too-high heartbeat, that this unexpected gunshot didn’t startle Ash into the waking world.

He thinks for another moment about their trip to Cape Cod. He and Ash had such similar upbringings in the loosest of terms and yet all the parallels were there: missing mother, dead or deadbeat father, oceanside life, growing up too quickly. He would never go so far as to say that his own issues were or are worse than Ash’s, but he could appreciate the familiarity. In all their time together, these two and a half years or so, Eiji had never thought to ask Ash how he felt about thunderstorms, and there was a moment where he feared he’d never be able to, but considering how he didn’t stir, it must bring a sort of calmness to him, just like it does to Eiji.

Although, Eiji wasn’t feeling that same calmness. At least not tonight.

The thunder’s crackling seems to encapsulate him in the kitchen and suddenly, he’s at war. Bombs are crashing outside the windows and all he can do is wait for death to take him. He wonders if it’d be quick and painless, or if he’d suffer. To die by fire or to die by ice. He’d rather it be painful, he thinks. Maybe then he’d understand what Ash feels, maybe he’d be able to sympathize more, to reach across that barrier, to pull out a brick and face what was on the other side without fear. Though he is not, would never  be, afraid of Ash, terror has many forms and within it, Eiji finds himself reflected.

The noise blocks his exits and roots his feet into the tile beneath them. Normally so cool and grounding now he only finds the chill crawling up the bare soles of his feet to further ice his veins. He swallows down the sob that threatens to join the cacophonous sound around him and moves the kettle onto the gas with trembling hands.

His nightmare haunts him, still. It drips down his throat like an overripe fruit, salacious and vile. Even now he can feel the blood pooling beneath his tongue, feel the numbness spread across his body from his neck, feel the hands sliding up his thighs and across his chest. It gags him, a viscous feeling coiled in the base of his throat. His empty stomach curdles but years of performance anxiety and all its tips for overcoming it helps to swallow down the rise of bile.

Ash doesn’t know what happened in Golzine’s mansion and Eiji doesn’t ever want to tell him. And why would he? Eiji is untouched, chastity intact, and alive. Ash has more than enough on his shoulders. Eiji sometimes looks at him, carrying the world, and wonders if this is what Pleione felt when Atlas was given the surname Telamon.

Though he’s numb, there’s a weight in his hands that feels too little like the fiberglass pole he abandoned and all too similar to the guns that are stashed around the apartment. He was once second in Japan and in this moment, more often than he’d prefer, really, he finds himself less than that, less than human. Even if that isn’t true, there is a truth within it. How could a bird fly when its wings have been broken? How could it soar when its feathers are cut? He will always be weak. Weak enough to abandon a sport that kept him going amidst his mother’s infidelity, his father’s illness, and his lost childhood. Weak enough to be a liability, a curse, for the man who has gone through hell and high water for him and him alone and yet still, somehow, important enough for that same man to put a gun to his temple and pull the trigger without hesitation.

Yut-Lung told him what feels like years ago, but in reality, has only been a few months. Maybe weeks. Eiji has lost count, lost track. He finds he can’t look at a calendar, can’t check the date or the time without panicking. So he doesn’t.

Yut-Lung waltzed into Eiji’s hospital room when he had been recovering from a bullet meant to kill Ash and paralyzed him just to prove a point. Visiting hours were over and Eiji found himself awake, staring, listlessly, out towards where he felt Ash fighting. He yearned, still does, to be there in some way, to have helped rather than be bed bound and forgotten. 

Yut-Lung was a specter, ghosting in and pricking him with too much comfort for a boy of only sixteen. One to paralyze his body, another to keep his heart rate from spiking and alerting the nurses. He had simply stared down at Eiji, eyes cold and calculating. Eiji thought he’d die there. Part of him welcomed it. Another part thought Yut-Lung would take away his vision again, or his hearing, or both, and leave him deafblind for the rest of his days. Another excuse to get Ash to abandon him. Maybe Eiji would’ve welcomed that abandonment if he had known he would be by Ash’s bedside a few days later, folding paper cranes and praying to each of the eight million Gods that inhabited his hometown that ruled over Japan for a quick and painless recovery.

In that moment, New York felt more sepulchered than Eiji ever thought it would. He was staring up at Yut-Lung, wondering if he’d make his death painless. If he died in place of Ash, he had thought then, he would’ve been happy to exchange his soul, to drift into that unknowing end. He’d trade his soul for Ash’s salvation if only he’d been asked. He’d do it then and he’d do it now.

Instead of that, Yut-Lung leaned down, let his hair drag over Eiji’s face and opened his mouth. He smelled of orchids and jasmine. His breath was minty, teeth like ivory beset in pink cushions. He whispered into his ear how Ash would always be in this life, that nothing Eiji could do would stop him from ruling and being the impenetrable Lynx. He told Eiji about his own weakness, his inability to protect, and his kitten-like demeanor. He explained how Eiji would always be a stain on Ash’s perfect life, his parasite, his invalid. He reiterated that Eiji never belonged in Ash’s world, never would. Slithered his poison into Eiji’s heart and demanded he return to Japan and die there, forgotten. He curled a hand around Eiji’s wrist and pressed a knuckle to his torso, just shy of the bullet wound that nearly ripped through one of his lungs and got close, very close, to his heart in the process, and told him that he’d have Ash to himself. Eiji kept himself from crying out. The pressure increased and he had bared down on his teeth as stitches were undone and the bleeding began again, anew. 

This pressure would set him back in his recovery. It’s what caused him to stay for longer, his letter delivered while he was still wrapped in white sheets and tended to by nurses who found him a hindrance. He didn’t even know if Ash had known he was still injured at that time. Plane tickets needed to be rescheduled, his mother phoned for once, his sister texting, and Eiji fading, fading, fading. When Ash was stabbed, Eiji felt it. It shot through his body and he woke from an impromptu nap with a gasp and a desperation to run. He knew where Ash was, felt it in his bones, in the sinew, in the muscle that was reknitting itself. What he didn’t know was that it was his fault. When Sing returned to his side to tell him that Ash didn’t want to come but that he was excited to see him again soon, Eiji demanded he return to Ash, to bring him to the hospital so Eiji could ask him why to his face. He hid his fear, the cold sweat, the tremors, the premonition, behind the pain of having his stitches reopened. He blames his arrogance and his anger on the large amount of painkillers they put him on at the time to help ease the pain. But it was this small indignance, a stubbornness born from Eiji’s inability to think clearly and an almost superhuman sixth sense when it came to Ash, that allowed Sing to find him in the Rose Reading Room, unconscious and hemorrhaging, his letter pressed to his cheek like a final will and testament.

Yut-Lung had demanded, in all of Eiji’s pain and agony, for the demon to resume its destruction. He claimed that he would personally see to it that Ash would climb to the top of the underground to reign as king and then, only then, would Yut-Lung kill him himself. Eiji needed to disappear from Ash’s life far before then.

Eiji inhaled those words into his lungs like smoke and branded them against his being, heart, soul, and mind alike, for they were true.

Even now, with Ash still recovering in the bedroom just beyond the paper thin walls of their Manhattan apartment, Eiji does not belong.

Little did Yut-Lung know that his actions against Eiji would cause Ash’s inevitable recovery under a name he had long since abandoned. Charlie was adamant to clear Ash’s name. He signed him into the hospital under a name long since disused: Aslan Jade Callenreese. Instead of the wanted gang-boss, he became John Doe, victim to Dino Golzine’s child trafficking ring and abuse. Ash’s hospital stay was long, arduous, and a tight-knit group of visitors kept vigil at his side. When he was conscious enough to answer Charlie’s questions, he did so with disdain and a look in his eyes that looked more like the ones that Eiji had sported after his broken ankle.

He was lucky to have wandered in, still wounded but creeping past the nurses station with stealth he learned on the streets of Manhattan with his friends, when Ash was pulling the needles out of his skin and ripping the EKG monitors off his chest. If he didn’t, he’s sure he wouldn’t be here with Ash now, sharing this too-big apartment and waiting for the second shoe to drop. If it ever would.

He watches with unseeing, yet still watering, eyes at the kettle heats. It’s a silent rumble as the water boils. He was lucky enough to find this one, one that doesn’t scream out its pressure. It wasn’t his favorite, he often forgot that it was heating and came back to find the stove flooded with boiling water, but it did the job for nights like these when he’d rather be quiet and unseen.

He’d been having a lot of them recently, these nights. They were inescapable and yet he’s made a routine out of their frequency. He’d crawl back into bed before Ash woke with his absence and stare at that crack in the window until six rolled around. Then he’d wake as if he were there the whole time, drag a lazy hand through Ash’s tousled locks, and rise to clean up from the night before.

He would cherish the way the early morning would break through the curtains and cover Ash in a bluish tint. He would shift with Eiji’s ministrations, preen into them like a cat would stretch into a sunspot before exhaling and settling deeper into the sheets. Eiji liked to think that his touch helped to push the nightmares away.

Eiji allowed himself this sort of selfishness in the mornings, before Ash was awake, because he knew it wouldn’t last. He knew that Ash wouldn’t stay for long. He was itching in his skin, shedding it slowly, like a snake that had grown too large for itself. He stared at the walls and the clocks and his laptop like he was waiting for something. Eiji knew he was.

He would leave soon and Eiji wouldn’t know where or for how long or if Ash is in danger. His chest throbs like the bullet was still wedged between his ribs.

The steam from the kettle billows out of the spout and he shuts the burner off. Rubbing his thumb and forefinger into his eyes, Eiji tightens his jaw to keep his teeth from chattering.

He’s fraying. His rope is thin and cut by knives, bullets, and needles. His dreams haunt him, his body betrays him with every gentle, unconscious touch from Ash, and he feels more useless than he’s ever thought possible.

He turns, freeing his feet from their connection to the ground, and grabs a tea bag with a shaking hand. Herbal, something to help calm him. Chamomile, he thinks, but the words are shifting like they’d rather be anywhere else than near him. His nearsightedness is getting worse, he thinks. He’ll have to get new contacts soon.

He pulls a mug out of the rack and places the bag into it before turning back to the stove. The water is next, a lovely heat against his hand as he holds the string of the bag in place against the ceramic mug. He lets it steep and puts the kettle back onto the burner so it can cool. He crowds his hands over the top of the steaming mug and lets it warm his fingers. Normally, he’s hot. He runs hot and retains heat and sweats often. Ash is usually the cold one, low blood pressure and oftentimes missing enough blood to warrant concern, but Eiji can’t help it when his nightmares shake the heat from his core, dropping him into an icebath of turmoil and stress.

He bobs the tea bag in the water and pinches some sugar off of the open mason jar before sprinkling it into his cup. He’d rather honey, but that feels like too much work. Plus, he’s sure he won’t be able to taste anything right now, anyways.

Finally, it steeps enough for Eiji’s mother’s chiding voice to slip out of his head and he gathers the mug into his hands and moves into the living room. He sits on the sill, the one that Ash usually crowds against during the time he’s in the apartment, careful not to disturb the piles of books that sit stacked a few inches from his feet. Turning his head back to the hallway that connects to their bedroom, Eiji waits for a few more moments. He knows he can do whatever he wants, that Ash isn’t some sort of circling vulture waiting for him to die, but it still feels a bit like breaking the rules whenever he peels the curtains back and stares at the sprawling expanse of Manhattan. Ash just isn’t sure if Blanca is still working for Yut-Lung or not, despite the way they had met and the Russian said he’d be heading back to the Caribbean. Either way, the curtains stay closed.

He pushes the fabric out of the way once he’s sure Ash won’t be rousing anytime soon and leans back against the vertical portion of the deep set window. He peers out over Manhattan like a sentinel. Oftentimes, that’s what he feels like. Sequestered to this pretty apartment so high above the masses, even now, even with Golzine dead and the teetering balance of Manhattan’s gangs somewhat refortified, he wonders what’s happening in the underbelly. Ash isn’t out there tonight, but he had been missing from the apartment for the past six days. He would filter in and out, come and go, sleep for a few hours with a request to be woken falling off his tired lips, and then be out again once he showered and checked to make sure Eiji was okay. Eiji had taken the liberty to gather his own alliances in the time since Ash’s hospitalization, so he was sure of his and Ash’s place, of their safety, even while Ash went to his own lengths to do the same. He would often convince them to tell him where Ash was, to text him a string of words that meant that Ash was okay, or that he wouldn’t be coming back tonight. A phone call that rang for four rings or that wasn’t completed meant Ash was in danger. A full call meant he was injured.

He had visitors, too. Sing would come often, bring food from Nadia, talk about his concerns and worries and stutter through Eiji’s compliments and gentle words of wisdom. Alex, Bones, and Kong would filter through for Eiji’s cooking, and Alex was teaching him, when Bones and Kong couldn’t make it, some general self-defense moves. Cain was teaching him how to shoot when Eiji found time to slip out during the day, under a strict oath to not tell Ash about it; both the shooting and the sneaking out. Cain seemed to enjoy the idea of being the teacher, took Eiji on with a hard clap to his shoulder and a passing comment about his younger sister’s failing grades. In exchange for tutoring her, Eiji received a pistol that he kept with Cain, a few really, and some of Cain’s free time. Eiji had resolved himself to learning, to keeping a skill set somewhat honed just in case. His own paranoia and his own disdain for how infantlike he felt forced him to reevaluate what it meant to be by Ash’s side.

He wouldn’t change, doesn’t want to, but he needs to know that if Ash was ever away, that he could protect himself. That he could aim for the head and shoot without regret, without keeping his eyes closed. That there were people out there who could protect him, in turn, if he needed to escape because Ash told him to. He’d be able to fight without being a burden if he had to. He wouldn’t be helpless anymore. He hated that feeling, something he’d been so familiar with. His plainness, his ordinariness. He hated it. He hated himself.

Sipping his tea, he curls his legs closer to his body and presses his forehead against the glass. He’s cold. The rain is coming down harder, the sky brightening with the lightning and roaring with the thunder. If he closes his eyes and concentrates for long enough, he can almost smell the saltwater from the sea.

He doesn’t, though, and permits himself to just watch the rainfall, watching the lights reflect off the droplets.

It must be a while of sipping his tea and staring mutely into the belly of Manhattan, for he starts to see the color of the clouds changing from an inky black-gray to a lighter blue. He hums, running his thumbs over the lip of his mug and relaxes further back into the wall behind him. The storm picks up, the wind whipping and howling through the gaps in the buildings and he hears feet on the ground behind him a little too late.

“Eiji?”

He jolts, even though he heard him still, and turns, caught red-handed. He stares at Ash in his disheveled and bleary eyed glory, hair a mane of wild tangles and puffed up from going to sleep with it wet. He’s in Eiji’s shirt, much too short for his long torso, revealing a good two inches of porcelain skin, and loose gray sweatpants that sink below the dips in his hips and are tied haphazardly. He isn’t wearing underwear, and Eiji has to cut his wandering gaze up to those eyes, twin lighthouses in the night, to guide him back from turbulent waters. There’s a panic that’s subsiding in them and Eiji latches onto it.

“Ash.” He breathes the name like a prayer, repentance in his tone. His hands curl around the curtain and pull it shut without looking. Ash’s eyes watch that movement and some clarity filters into them, some of sleep’s pull dissipating. He sets his cup down by his feet and rises off the sill only to find his legs have fallen asleep, probably did a while ago. His bad ankle twists under his weight and sends a jolt of electricity up to his hip. He stumbles on pins and needles, toppling forward like a newborn deer. A sound escapes through his teeth, a hiss of disappointment, a breath of pain.

“Shit,” Ash says softly, crossing the distance a bit too late, arms outstretched. Eiji collides with the floor in a heavy heap. His chest throbs where it made contact with the rug, his breath pushed out of him on impact. Ash tumbles to his knees beside him, hands fluttering over him, but never touching.

“Sorry,” Eiji breathes, shifting to sit up. He keeps his eyes on the ground, on the space between them, trying to focus on the throbbing in his ankle and chest instead of that panic he saw. “Sorry.”

Ash huffs, slipping a hand under Eiji’s bicep to stabilize him as he rights himself. His voice is strange when he says, “That’s all you do nowadays.”

“I am Japanese,” He mumbles, sinking back onto his legs in seiza-style, falling into a familiar banter. He looks up at Ash who’s kneeling as if he were going to propose, one calf to the ground, one thigh to his chest. Eiji swallows thickly, losing his footing in unfamiliar territories that his mind has wandered to far more often than he’d like. He’s desperate, he knows that. Maybe something like that would get Ash to stay or to want to come back. Eiji wants to press his forehead to the floor, wants to prostrate himself, wants to enact a proper dogeza to beg for forgiveness, for salvation, for Ash’s hands to cradle his head and bless him with anything he can give, anything he can spare. He tries to keep this out of his eyes, tries to stop himself from staring, awe-like, into the face of his friend, his companion, his partner, his soulmate.

How could he not look at him this way, though, when it’s as if Ash has hung the stars in the sky just for him?

Tearing his eyes away again only to look back seconds later, Eiji sighs out, “I didn’t mean to wake you.”

Frowning, Ash reaches a tentative hand out to brush some stray hairs out of Eiji’s eyes, fingers never grazing his skin. “You didn’t.”

Eiji searches his gaze and then moves to rise despite the tingling in his legs, offering a hand to the blond below him. Ash’s eyes reveal nothing. “You should head back to sleep then, if you can. It’s early.”

Ash takes his hand and rises slowly to his feet, the echo of sleep still being shaken out of his muscles, tungsten-like in their heaviness, Eiji was sure. He still favors his uninjured side, but he’s grown more confident in distributing his weight more equally. He holds onto Eiji’s hand even as he stands to his full height. His palm is warm against Eiji’s colder one. Ash takes a step forward and Eiji cranes his head back just a bit to stare up at the American.

He’s grown, he thinks to himself. Maybe another inch or so.

“Eiji,” Ash whispers, as if he’s seeing something that Eiji can’t, as if he’ll crumble whatever precipice that they’ve found themselves on with that word alone. His palm is warm. “Are you alright?”

“I’m fine,” He says, offering Ash one of those smiles that gets his shoulders to ease, his muscles to uncoil. “I woke up a bit ago and couldn’t go back to sleep.” His eyes cut to the clock on the far wall reading six thirty, now.

Ash stares at him, searches his face even as his shoulders drop an inch and his limbs loosen.

“If you don’t want to sleep more, would you like coffee?” Eiji asks, tilting his head to the side, keeping that smile in place. “I went down to the market yesterday and bought a new type that I think you’ll like.” It’s always Ash he’s thinking about. Eiji could care less about coffee and cares even less about feeding himself nowadays. Their fridge and pantries are stocked with things Ash eats and drinks. He wonders, vaguely, if Ash knows that, if he sees the effort. He must, because the look he gets from Ash is softened further by Eiji’s words.

Eiji promised him forever, promised him safety. He’ll give it to him, one way or another. If it’s food, if it’s care, if it’s hugs and bodies pressed against each other under the cover of darkness, if it’s never touching him again, if it’s leaving, if it’s staying, if, somehow, it was both, Eiji didn’t care. He’d make good on his promise. He’d protect Ash. 

But he was selfish. He wanted to stay. More than anything, he wanted to stay.

Ash shakes his head, voice muted, “No, not right now.”

Something passes through Ash’s eyes as Eiji nods, “Ah, okay. I was planning on heading… Well, if it’s alright, I was thinking about heading to Central Park this morning.” He sees the reemergence of panic in glowing green and adds, “To run. Just for a bit.” His ankle protests with a well-timed throb, but he has to move. He’s been in this apartment for too long and has been leaving without Ash’s permission too often for him to be able to hide it for much longer. 

“You don’t have to ask me,” Ash breathes, shaking his head, eyes squinting just a bit in his confusion. The look only serves to hook Eiji’s organs and tether them to the ground. “You’re allowed to do whatever you want. You just have to tell me. That’s all.”

“Right,” Eiji says, gaze dropping to Ash’s neck as the blond swallows. He looks back up at Ash, loses himself in the humid, jungle green of his eyes. “You’re welcome to come with me if you…” He trails off, seeing the regret and decline in his vision before Ash has time to voice it.

“It’s alright,” Eiji amends with a shrug, taking a half step back. He wants to make it easy, whatever transition they’re heading towards. If Ash wants to spend time away from him to finish whatever he feels he needs to, then Eiji will distance himself. He won’t be picky, he won’t kick up a fuss even if he’s dying because of it. Ash is much more important than he is, after all. He cuts his eyes away and turns towards the window again. “It might be good to go on my own, anyways.”

He makes to untangle their hands to gather the mug from the sill, to do something with the energy that’s built in his body, but Ash’s hand clamps down on his like a vice, stopping his movement.

Eiji turns his head towards Ash again. “Ash?”

“It’s raining,” Ash says, voice edging on a shaky sort of desperation, and Eiji’s hearing expands as his heart shrinks in its shame. He hears the wind howl against the glass, rattling it. The thunder cracks across the sky and the rain picks up, pounding against the windows. He wonders how they’ve managed to switch places as the rain smacks like bugs against the windows. Ash, normally so put together, is collapsing. He, himself, normally collapsing, is solidifying in his fear.

“Oh,” Eiji says, voice surprisingly light. He turns back towards the hidden windows, remembers the way the lights bounced off the drops streaking down the glass and traces the outline of hidden buildings, ones he’s memorized at this point, with his eyes. “Sorry, I… I must’ve forgotten.”

Ash squeezes his hand again and Eiji turns towards him like a flower to the sun. Ash’s eyes are shining, green crystals glowing a slight orange in the light from the hallway.

Halloween, Eiji thinks to himself, on a whim. He’d laugh if he could, mention it, talk about pumpkins and ghosts and hold back the urge to kiss the pout that would show up on Ash’s lips until they were red and parted. But he can’t. Not when Ash looks like he’s staring at a dead man.

Eiji turns towards him, reaching up with his free hand to hover it over his cheek. He doesn’t touch him, but his fingers push a strand of golden-spun silk out of Ash’s eyes. “Ash? Are you okay?”

“Are you okay?” Ash presses, tilting his head towards Eiji’s hand. Eiji’s fingertips land on his cheekbone and he flinches them away but keeps his hand suspended. Ash’s frown gets deeper.

He smiles again, huffing out a breath, “I told you I was, didn’t I?”

“You did,” Ash concedes, tilting his head pointedly into Eiji’s hand. His fingertips touch the high arch of Ash’s cheek again and this time Eiji allows them to stay there. His jaw skims the bottom of his palm but Eiji doesn’t settle it there, couldn’t, can’t. Fire sparks on the surface of his skin, coiling through his hand and warming his chilled skin. He wants to sink into that feeling, to burrow into Ash’s warmth and sleep there. He’s sure, more than sure, that the nightmares would go away if he did.

“Then, I’m alri–”

“But I don’t believe you.”

That strikes Eiji in the chest like the bullet did. It rips the words from his throat and makes his ears ring.

“What?” he asks, confused. He sounds like he’s underwater. “What do you mean you don’t believe me?”

Ash’s free hand comes to grasp Eiji’s wrist where it hangs in the air next to his face. He presses Eiji’s palm to his cheek and looks down at Eiji, eyes lidded. It’s a strange fit, like they were made for each other on a whim, as an afterthought, but Eiji still finds it clicking into place in his chest like a gear in a clock that hadn’t been moving until now. Its echo vibrates through his body and a long-standing tension unwinds. “I don’t believe that you’re okay.”

Eiji sighs, looking away, then back up at Ash. “What can I do to make you believe me, then?”

“Tell me the truth,” Ash huffs, a tired smile cracking the straight line of his lips before it falls again. “Tell me why you haven’t been sleeping.”

They must be a sight to see, with how Ash’s hand is still tangled with his, his palm open on Ash’s cheek, his wrist cradled by that pianist-like hand. Something flips in Eiji’s stomach, traitorous and feeble, like a seedling trying to grow out of season. Eiji isn’t sure whether to nurture or kill it at this point.

“I have been,” Eiji says. It’s true, kind of. He has been sleeping. When he has time while Ash’s out, he’ll find himself sleeping on the couch or on whatever surface was in front of him, really. Recently he’s been setting an alarm for four in the afternoon. After Ash caught him sleeping on the kitchen island when he got home, the old man jabs only got worse. In an attempt to avoid more of those and a conscious effort to be awake for whenever Ash rolled into the apartment, he programmed the alarm to ring every day. “It’s nothing to worry about.”

“I think you’re lying to me,” Ash points out, dropping Eiji’s hand where it was tangled at their sides to reach out and place his own fingertips to the skin beneath Eiji’s right eye. It’s featherlight, barely there. Eiji isn’t sure he actually feels it, but the warmth of Ash’s hand where it would normally be so cold almost burns his skin at the same time. “It’s… I can’t tell when you lie. Not anymore. If you’ve been doing it all this time, I wouldn’t know. But your body doesn’t lie, can’t lie. I know what sleep deprivation looks like. I know how it affects the body. You’re not sleeping and I know you’re lying to me about it.”

The admission was strange. Since when did Ash not know when he’s lied? When did it change?

It’s not like Eiji has a reason to lie to Ash in the first place, considering his personal open-door policy. Lying to Ash, also, felt like swallowing rusted knives. He hates lying to Ash, wants nothing more than honesty in their relationship at all times.

But sometimes even he’s allowed to do it, right? Is a white lie okay if it helps another person?

He cuts his gaze away from the way Ash’s eyes are boring into his own. The weight of them is too much. His resolve to continue the farce crumbles as if it were made of sand. “It’s… I’ve just been having trouble. It’s nothing to worry about.”

His fingers shift from beneath Eiji’s eye. His hand curls around Eiji’s cheek, his thumb resting where his fingertips were moments before. Eiji drops his hand to rest half on Ash’s chest and half on his shoulder when he releases the other, wanting to stay connected, but not wanting to cross any undeclared line. He feels Ash’s heartbeat beneath his palm and it steadies his own. “You’ve been doing this, too.” Ash’s thumb swipes a broad, gentle stroke under Eiji’s eye. “You won’t look at me.”

Eiji snaps his gaze back up to Ash’s, blinking his confusion, “What?”

Inhaling, Ash takes another half step closer. His body heat emanates off of him in waves and Eiji’s own is quick to sap it from the air. “You keep looking at me only to look away. It’s like you’re… ashamed. Is it me? Do you not want to be around me anymore?” The early morning air fizzles, somehow, and Eiji is a slave to the way emotions are muddled and words fly, unbidden, from barely awake minds. Ash’s voice is even, deathlike in its calmness. He may be asking a question, but it’s obvious to Eiji that this is not the outcome he wants, even if Ash feels it’s for the best.

Eiji’s voice cracks with how quickly he replies. “What?” He shakes his head vehemently, both to shake the creakiness out of his throat and to show his confusion. “Are you stupid?”

Ash makes a muted noise of surprise, eyes widening just a bit, lips quirking at the corners. “Am I stupid?”

“Are you?” Eiji can hear the accusation in his tone, the honesty that built their bond from the moment they met in that dingy bar two years ago. The sky lights up, casting them in a muted blue glow through the curtains.

“What else am I supposed to think?”

That has Eiji pausing. His lips part as if to say something more pointed towards Ash’s inability to understand, but his voice betrays him. “That it’s me.”

Ash makes a soft sound, a curious hum. It’s a noise he makes when he’s found an answer he’s not familiar with. Eiji heard it often when they were in Los Angeles and Cape Cod, when Banana Fish was still something untouchable, something they were fighting to discover rather than dealing with the fallout of. Shorter’s hazel eyes are striking in Eiji’s mind’s eye. It loosens his voice from his chest.

And so, Eiji continues where his mind is telling him to stop, “It’s not you. It’ll never be you.” His gaze slips from Ash’s eyes in his shame, staring at the clock over Ash’s shoulder before drifting further to the way his shirt outlines the lithe musculature of Ash’s shoulder and neck. He hopes his voice is convincing enough in its execution to assuage his worries. “It’s all me. It’s internal. You don’t have to worry, though. I’ll be alright.”

When he looks back up at Ash, he’s struck by his expression. Crestfallen. Disappointed. It would’ve hurt less if Ash had hit him. A soft rumble of thunder, as if the storm was passing them adds to the cadence, the fizzling of the room. Eiji wishes he’d been hit, wants to offer his cheek to Ash and beg him to swing, to make sure it hurts.

“You don’t want to talk to me about it?” Ash’s voice is even, but his eyes are betraying the calmness of his tone. He looks like Eiji stabbed him. He looks like he did when he woke up in the hospital after the coma, resigned and yet deep within his hazy, unfocused gaze, so, so afraid. Ash is deeply hurt by this and Eiji is the root cause.

Eiji shakes his head, unsure as to when he’d parted his lips in shock, “It’s not… that’s not it. You have so much more to worry about and with your recovery I just… It’s really okay. I promise.” He meant it, too. It’s nothing Eiji hasn’t handled before. He’s been doing this for a while, even when they were in Los Angeles and Cape Cod. Even when he was back in Japan and Ibe had reached out to bring him to the states, it had been ebbing. This’ll pass, just like all those other times. This one has just… taken a while longer than he’s used to.

“It’s not about if it’s okay,” Ash insists, his hand slipping from Eiji’s cheek to clasp around the back of his neck. His eyes are wolf bright, intense in that carnal way that builds a fire in Eiji’s stomach like he’d been starving for years and only now is able to feast. “It’s about if you’re okay. I want to know. I want you to tell me when you don’t feel well, or when you’re struggling. I don’t care if I have a gun to my head, Eiji, I would still want to know how you are and if you’re okay. Fuck this shit about me having more important things to worry about. My injury isn’t even that bad anymore. It’s been weeks.”

Eiji licks his lips, mouth parted still, heart somersaulting in his chest. A gun to his head, sure. He knows the truth of that statement like he knows how to jump. He wants to say something to tell Ash that it’s really okay, that he’s alright, that there’s nothing wrong, but he’s pinned. Ash’s eyes are insistent and clear, all traces of sleep missing from his expression. His hawk-like focus is on Eiji and Eiji alone, as intense as when he lines the sight of his revolver up to a target. The lightning comes again, flashing in clusters and bursts. Volatile and electrified.

“Please,” Ash begs. Begs. “You’ve always been there for me when I needed you. You sat by my bedside for weeks. You took a bullet for me, picked up my pieces and put me back together after Golzine and Foxx, and kept doing it after everything ended. You bought me a ticket to Japan, you’ve saved me. You’ve saved me, Eiji, so many times I can’t even count them. Why can’t I help you? Why can’t I offer you the same? Why can’t I save you?”

Eiji’s resolve crumbles a bit further.

Eiji saved him? In what world? Ash has saved Eiji more often than not. Eiji can’t save anything and certainly not Ash. If he can’t save himself, how could he even think about saving Ash, no matter how desperately he wants to?

Ash charges forward, pressing their foreheads together as he stares into Eiji’s widened eyes, “You’re here, with me, because you want to be. You said that and I believe you. I do, I believe you. I know it’s not because I have anything to offer you; what could I offer anyways? If anything, I take too much from you.” For the first time, Ash is the one to cut his eyes away and Eiji watches as he reads the spine of some book that’s been overturned onto its open pages on the windowsill. Eiji wonders if its plot has anything to do with their current conversation. The thunder cracks across the sky in the pause, opening the skies to drown Manhattan in more rain. “You’ve been nothing but good to me from the beginning. You mean more to me than anyone else. I can’t… I have to be selfish with you, or I worry you’ll get hurt. I have to keep you close even if I feel like you should be in Japan and far, far away from me. Unless you want to leave?”

“Never,” Eiji breathes in the space that Ash left open.

“Then why won’t you talk to me?”

“What do you want to know?”

Ash whines, a broken sound that’s more agony than petulance and shuts his eyes. “Everything. Why haven’t you been sleeping?”

Eiji pauses, a pressure behind his eyes, the word dancing on his tongue. Needles are pricking his skin, his neck, his forearm. He’s paralyzed.

“Please,” Ash begs again. “Please.”

“Nightmares,” Eiji says, the suddenness of the word wetting his eyes, pooling along his lower lid. He tilts his chin up a bit, if only to keep them from spilling. What a baby, crying over something like this. “I’ve been having nightmares.”

Ash keeps his eyes closed but squeezes Eiji’s neck, “For how long?”

The tears break free of his lashes, tumbling down his cheeks, but his voice is even, “Since Los Angeles.”

Ash’s eyes flash open, startled and then panicked by the sight before him, “Since California?” He’s beside himself, Eiji can see it in his face.

“It wasn’t important then,” Eiji admits, feeling the exhaustion starting to overtake his body. He feels heavy, like he’s been injected with cement. His tears feel heavy like knives carving pathways down his cheeks. “I figured they’d go away. They did, for a while.”

Ash licks his lips, moves the hand from Eiji’s neck to his cheek to wipe at the tears streaking down his face. His hands are gentle and Eiji can’t understand how it’s come to this. “What brought them back?”

“They never really went away,” He admits. Still, he slides his eyes elsewhere, unable to face him head on as he confesses. A coward is something he’ll always be, even now. “But if we’re… If you want honesty, then… It was Yut-Lung.”

“What do you mean?” The air around them electrifies, the lightning outside only highlighting its trembling growth. Ash’s presence is billowing, covering the room like massive wings. Eiji is struck by the way Ash’s hair dances in his periphery, like fire.

Pyrisous, he thinks again. Perhaps he would be better off if he allowed himself to be swallowed by the flame instead of pulled from it. How did Patroclus feel, Eiji wonders, when Achilles would rage? What would he do to quell the fury, so forceful in its rawness, justified or selfish as it was?

“When you were fighting,” Eiji continues, the tears spilling still. He feels so weak. He’s such a disgrace. He can’t lie now. Not when Ash is watching his every movement, cataloging every tell, breathing the same air. “When I was hospitalized. Yut-Lung came to visit me.”

Ash stops moving. Eiji closes his eyes, feeling the blackhole of his guilt swirling and growing with each passing second. Whereas before Eiji could count his breaths to keep his own maintained, now he feels none of it. The heat from his body disappears, the hand on his neck is suddenly the same temperature as Eiji is, disappearing entirely from his awareness.

Startled, Eiji opens his eyes to look back at Ash only to find him across the room, reaching into the cushions to pull out one of the pistols he has hidden there. The barrel gleams in the lamplight and Ash’s body glows with the orange. Fireborn, Godlike, Frenzied. Eiji has spent the better part of two years cataloging the quietness of Ash’s steps, memorizing the way his presence ebbs and flows from place to place. He doesn’t ever hear Ash, he really only feels him enter and exit. The fact that he’s moved without Eiji knowing sends Eiji’s mind into a spiral.

He’s going to leave.

“No!” Eiji gasps, crossing the distance in seconds and wrapping his hand around Ash’s left wrist, the one that holds the gun so steady. His knuckles are blanched with his grip, trigger finger thankfully uncurled. “No, stop!”

Ash’s eyes land on him, an unwanted animal constricting his pupils to pinpricks and burrowing into his skin like an insect. He’s transforming and Eiji needs him to stop. He needs Ash, not the beast. Not the Lynx. 

No. No, he doesn’t need Ash. 

He needs Aslan. He needs the boy that survived a stabbing and was reborn in that hospital with the goodwill of the people who loved him, who love him. He needs the boy that Ash Lynx was born to protect. The boy that Eiji is desperate to protect.

He feels the pressure of Shorter’s body on him, the hot drip of his blood onto Eiji’s chest, branding him. He feels Shorter’s fear, sees his face crack open with terror unlike anything Eiji had seen before, understands the weight of being his downfall, of Ash’s downfall, of Ash pulling the trigger to end his best friend’s life. He feels and understands the meaning behind being Shorter’s worst nightmare in his last moments, how horrific that must’ve been for him, how much he suffered because of Eiji and Eiji alone. He feels himself subdued, unable to help, unable to stop it from happening. He feels the ropes tied around his wrist and a white, silk sheet draped over his naked body.  He feels the prick of a needle in the back of his neck, he feels the loss of his hearing and vision. He feels the path of a bullet across his shoulder, the tearing of one through his chest. He feels the weight of his body, the weight of his presence at Ash’s side and the horrific understanding of what the word burden means in English, learned so quickly in his first week here and reinforced in the weeks, years after. He won’t let this be another way he fails. He won’t be another weakness in the grand scheme of Ash’s plans, even if it ends with his own self-destruction. He thinks of Achilles, he thinks of war. He thinks of dying at the hands of a being more powerful than humanity itself just to show his soulmate that there’s more to life than dying, than victory, than pettiness. 

His voice is knocked loose as the emotions overtake him.

“Stop,” Eiji pleads, placing another hand on top of the gun. He pushes it so the muzzle points to the floor. “Stop. It’s over. It’s done.”

“Is he why your stay at the hospital was longer than it should’ve been?” Ash hisses, a demand in his voice that’s never really come across as such, at least not to Eiji. Ash’s head turns to look at him. The green of his eyes are almost neon in their wildness.

Eiji opens his mouth and takes a breath that catches in the back of his throat. His hand clamps down further onto Ash’s wrist.

“Is he?” The question is a demand now, a caustic touch to the scar tissue beneath his chest, just shy of his heart.

Eiji says nothing and damns himself and Yut-Lung in the process.

Ash’s chest swells with his long intake of breath, shoulders moving with all the brutality and primal savagery of his namesake. Eiji felt his lips trembling with his inability to lie. He can’t. Not about this.

“I’ll kill him,” Ash whispers intimately, as if it’s something a lover would say to their partner. It’s a promise, a dangerous thing swaddled in the belly of the beast that prowls beneath Ash’s skin. His eyes are lidded now, and Eiji watches as Ash plans out exactly how he’ll kill Yut-Lung and keep Eiji safe in the crossfire.

“Don’t,” Eiji chokes out, gripping the barrel of the gun with a strength that blanches his own knuckles. The metal digs into his skin, but he doesn’t care. His eyes drop to Ash’s chest, scanning the way it heaves and tugs at the fabric. “Don’t. You’ll only end up making things worse and when you leave I’ll have to… I’ll be…” Alone, he doesn’t say. His tears flow faster, his breathing catching on each word he can’t say.

That seems to knock the animal off the scent, if only for a moment, for Ash’s pupils expand and he blinks down at Eiji. “What?”

He heaves, hands shaking, voice cracking, “When you leave! When you’re… you’ll leave. You’re leaving. You’re getting ready to leave. I know you are.” His voice trembles and he’s such a coward he can’t look Ash in the eye anymore. His gaze drops lower, to his sternum. He can almost see the heart behind it, beating to the sound of war drums. “You’re going to… You’re going to go finish what Golzine started, you’re going to leave again and I… You’re going to send me to Japan.”

Ash’s shoulders drop, mouth parting. He’s shocked, Eiji realizes.

Eiji lets out a pitiful little sound, a mournful one, eyes squeezing shut in the pain of it all. He’s grieving the man before him, grieving for the little boy that resides in him, still, the one that the both of them are so desperate to keep safe. He just wants Ash to be safe. He wants them both to be safe and happy. But he’s grieving for Ash because he’s about to lose him. How is it possible to grieve someone who’s still living? Someone who stands before you, unharmed and breathing? Eiji can’t answer that. He’s tried. His finger slides to the grip of the gun and he presses the mag release that rests there. Ash had replaced the factory ones a few weeks ago so they’d press smoother in the event Ash needed to use them. It was a project to keep himself busy after they discharged him from the hospital. The clip falls to the floor with a hard thump. Ash’s eyes flick to the magazine on the floor, then back to Eiji. Eiji looks pointedly at the discarded clip on the rug and wishes he’d sink into the ground and disappear. Eiji’s lucky Ash had shown him how to do this when he’d given him the M1911 all those months ago, or he and Cain would be on the other end of Ash’s ire and he doesn’t want that, doesn’t need that. He’d break down more than he already is.

“I’m not stupid,” Eiji grinds out, as though it hurts to admit it. It does. His ankle throbs and the tender skin from the bullet’s path through his torso cries out its agony with a sharp stinging feeling. “I know you’ve been desperate to get out, to go and finish this. I won’t stop you, I won’t. I always want you to do what you want to do, what feels right, but this,” he gestures with the unloaded gun to the magazine on the floor as if to prove a point, “Isn’t it.”

“I won’t let you leave like this,” Eiji continues, shaking his head at nothing in particular. “I can’t. It doesn’t matter what Yut-Lung did or didn’t do. If you want me to leave because it’d be easier for you I will. I won’t stop you from pursuing your goals and finishing this,” He emphasizes this again, desperate for Ash to understand, for him to listen, “But you can’t die. You won’t go to Yut-Lung and you won’t avenge me for something that I’ve already forgiven. I won’t let you.”

And he did forgive, he has. Eiji can’t blame Yut-Lung for being born into a family that hated him, hates him, treated him so terribly, ravaged his mother before his eyes and killed her in cold blood to hide the evidence. He can’t stop himself from seeing a broken boy, the one the world forgot, and the one that’s trying so desperately to control any aspect of his life that he’d go as far as threatening the ones closest to him to get it. He doesn’t have the strength to hold his kidnapping and paralyzation and almost-assault over Yut-Lung’s head, doesn’t have the drive to hate him, even if he should, even if most of his nightmares surround the man and his unexplainable obsession over himself and Ash. He can’t hate someone he sees too much of himself in, that he sees too much of Ash in.

But it wasn’t a question as to why he was obsessed was it? Eiji knew exactly why Yut-Lung was doing what he was doing. He knew, would always know. Acknowledging it, though, that made it all the more real, all the more painful, and all the more pitiful.

Ash is shell shocked, mouth parted and eyes wide. His mouth is forming the word forgiven over and over. His hand is loose around the pistol and Eiji gently pulls it from his grasp. He kneels before Ash, something he’d do for the rest of his life if he could only keep Ash beside him forever, and picks up the magazine. He threads it into the opening on the bottom of the grip and palms it back into position. It clicks to signal its snug fit and lightning flashes. He stays kneeling, finding himself unable to rise with the weight of everything pressing down onto his shoulders. He feels codependent, he feels like a parasite. He feels like he’ll only end up getting in the way but he feels like he needs to stand at Ash’s side despite that.

How can someone be this much of a walking contradiction? The gun is heavy in his hands. Eiji imagines its weight as all of the things he’s ever done wrong. It gets unsurprisingly heavier.

He grips the muzzle of the gun and passes it up to Ash, grip facing him. He keeps his eyes on the ground, subservient, submissive.

“But I can’t stop you,” He murmurs, letting his hand slide off the gun when Ash’s left curls around the handhold. “If you want to go, I can’t stop you but I don’t want you to go. Is that enough to…” He presses his lips together, stares down at his hands where they lay palm over palm on his lap. His calluses are different now, growing in strange places rather than the ones he’s familiar with. He’s not the same boy he was when Ibe found him at fifteen. He can’t ever go back to Japan. He’s not built for that kind of life anymore. He’s not the same.

He can’t recognize himself.

Eiji wants to bury himself in the sheets of their shared bed and drown in the soft fabric, never to surface. He wants Ash to pull the sheets back and find him within their depths.

He wants his mother. The thought rattles him.

Ash says nothing, but he’s still here, staring down at Eiji. He hasn’t left.

Finding the will, Eiji rises slowly to his feet, wiping his face with his hand as he goes. He sniffs, picking up the hem of his shirt to wipe the dampness off his skin.

“I’m sorry,” He says again, stumbling over his English, the contractions, the strange grammar. His accent is heavy, heavier than it has been. A foreigner in a country that’s been more home to him than his native. “I shouldn’t be acting like this. You deserve better.”

He looks at Ash, then, the way his eyes are wide, how they’re flickering over Eiji’s body as if he doesn’t know what he’s seeing. When Eiji clenches his jaw to keep himself from begging Ash to say something, that intense focus snaps to the muscles in his cheeks. Maybe he has changed too much. Maybe Ash is seeing him for what he really is. Maybe this is where it ends, where everything ends.

Eiji clears his throat in the hopes of getting a grip on his accent and dips his head, submissive, gentle. “I’ll make breakfast. Are eggs okay? Or do you want salad again?” He had just restocked on avocados, but he’d make whatever Ash wanted. He slides past Ash, making sure not to touch him, and walks slowly, unsteadily, into the kitchen. “It’ll be a few minutes for both, so… whatever you want, okay?”

“Hey, Eiji,” Ash begins, though it's a weak sound, lost in the rattling of the windows from the wind and the rain that splatters against the glass. Eiji places his hand onto the countertop and squats down to open the cabinets beneath the island, where the pans are. “Eiji.”

Finally, the thunder booms overhead, sounding more like a gunshot or a bomb than nature’s fury. In tandem, something in him snaps at the sound of his name on Ash’s lips. It reminds him of how Ash’s name sounds in his mouth, on his tongue, how he forms it with his teeth and voice. It’s sweet like honey, it’s a fragile hope, it’s a damning thing. That rope that had been hanging on by threads, by molecules, cut clean through by Eiji’s own traitorous heart.

He loves this boy. He loves this boy more than he loves himself and he’d rather die than be apart from him again. His dreams are haunted by Ash leaving, never coming back and Eiji surviving, somehow, without him. His dreams are Arthur taking him away from Ash, of Yut-Lung taking him away from Ash, of being a burden and watching Ash die in front of him because of his own negligence, his own powerlessness.

He’d rather die, he realizes. He’d die if Ash left him. Even if his body didn’t, he would die. Everything he was would leave him. He would be different. That’s what would make him change.

Codependency, his mind supplies. It’s unhealthy. You’re both sick.

But how could he not be? Ash had nearly left him. Gone, without a trace. A goodbye whispered to Eiji’s hospital room when he was fresh out of surgery. Then gone from this earth, from the world, with a stab wound that could’ve been healed, that almost wasn’t if Sing hadn’t arrived soon enough to catch the slow bleed.

Sa-yo-na-ra.

Live fast, die young, Shorter had told him when they were on their way to Los Angeles. Ash had been asleep, finally, rocked and lulled by the engine and the bumps in the road. Our lives are built around that. You live your whole life in eighteen years and then what? There’s nothin’ left after that. There’s no life left for us after.

Eiji had prayed. He prays even now. He thanks every God and deity and if he knew the names of all the eight million Gods that made up Izumo, he’d thank them personally, like he tried to do in the hospital by Ash’s bedside. Ash was alive. He had something left, he had life to live, still. Eiji had to pull him from the brink, but he was here. He was staying, he understood why.

Codependent, sure. Who wouldn’t be? It’d get easier. They both needed help. They were working on it. It’d be better. It’d get easier.

Right?

He covers his mouth with his hand, grips the countertop with the strength he’d use to vault himself into the air, to fly, distantly fears the granite will crack under the pressure, and crumbles forward, shoulders hunching. His knees hit the tile with a soft sound and his fingers slip off the counter to join the one covering his lips. He tries to breathe, tries to find it in himself to gather his wits and stand straight and make breakfast, but he’s lost himself. He’s crying, the tears won’t stop, and he can’t breathe.

This is not the person that Ash needs. Eiji Okumura, the naïve, stubborn, free-spirited man, the one that took a bullet for him, that will continue to do so, that will shoot with his eyes open and his hand steady, is the one that Ash needs. He doesn’t need the Eiji Okumura that left vaulting, his family, his dying father behind because he was too weak to handle it. He doesn’t need the Eiji Okumura that is always second best, that’s always running towards an impossible goal and hurts himself in the process of getting there. He doesn’t need the Eiji Okumura that fell in love with him, that wants to beg him to stay, to find another way to get what he wants.

And oh, how he hates himself for everything he’s done and everything he hasn’t.

There are hands on his back, warm and grounding, but Eiji can’t hear anything anymore. His labored breaths are shaking and he wants nothing more than to crumble into dust, to disappear beneath the floorboards until he’s able to rise again, anew.

If he rises at all, after this.

“–ji!”

“I’m sorry,” he chokes out, even though he can’t hear anything anymore. His vision is spotting, he might pass out. “I’m sorry, I-I just need a minute.” He goes to stand, but those hands are heavy, imploring, moving him around to sit on the tiled floor instead of rising. He can’t breathe, not really, but he knows he’s not gasping for breath. In fact, he knows he’s not making any sound. Everything he’s doing is silent, even in his panic.

“Fuck!” Ash hisses, and his hands, warm and secure, are on Eiji’s wrists. They’re tugging, but Eiji can’t let go. If he lets go, he’ll be loud. He can’t be loud. “Eiji, Eiji!”

“Sorry,” he garbles out, a blubbering sound that is just as pathetic as he feels, through his fingers. “I’m fine, I’m sorry.”

“Stop,” Ash breathes, a shakiness to his voice. He’s trembling, Eiji realizes. “Stop apologizing. Breathe, Eiji, please. Please breathe.”

Begging again. What has Eiji done?

Dropping his hands to his lap, he stares down at his palms and wishes he could see blood there, because that would mean that he had taken some of Ash’s away. That would mean that he had gone through hell to ensure Ash’s safety, too. That would mean that he had aimed at Golzine’s head with confidence and kept his eyes open when he pulled the trigger.

How could you miss from that distance? Sing’s voice cracks through his skull like a bat to his temple.

He inhales, forcing his lungs into submission and the person he sees in front of him is Ash, but not really.

“I,” Ash begins, face paler than Eiji remembers. “I have to finish this.” It’s a damning sentence. It reiterates exactly what Eiji had been saying. It cements his nightmares for weeks to come, cements the horror he’ll feel and face when Ash is no longer in his line of sight.

“I know,” Eiji whispers, but his voice is wrecked, as if he’d been screaming. “I know you do.”

Ash shakes his head, “But not before I know that you… that everything is taken care of.”

“It is,” Eiji implores, sliding his eyes shut. He’s still crying. He’s desperate for Ash to understand. He’s at a loss for words but finds he can’t stop talking. “Everything is taken care of. You don’t have to save everyone to save yourself. This will not be your salvation.”

“Nothing is my salvation,” Ash admits, voice terribly soft, despite everything. “I used to think that… that you might be. Everything about you felt like something I could never have, but suddenly I did have it. Normalcy, a chance to be seventeen. Hell, a chance to be eighteen and maybe even nineteen. A chance to get out of my teens. To see my twenties. To grow old.”

Live fast, die young. Shorter’s voice is clear, his cadence, the slight accent. Eiji’s heart breaks. Shorter lived faster, died younger, died tragically, and Eiji did nothing. To have Shorter fear him in his final moments, to the point of madness, will forever haunt him. It’s proof that all he causes is pain. It’s something he’s never told Ash about.

Never will.

“You can,” Eiji sobs, coiling in on himself again. “You can, you can.”

Ash’s hand is warm on his face, coaxing him to sit upright, to unwind himself. “I have to leave to get rid of Golzine’s confidants. It won’t be safe to be with me, not once I start. I thought that… I thought you would be safe with me. But look at you, look at what happened. It’s your safety, above all else. I won’t let you dirty your hands like mine are.”

Eiji’s eyes flash open and he grips that hand on his face, “Forever, Ash. I promised you forever. I meant it then and I mean it now. If you die, I die. I’d rather die knowing I did everything for you than live with the regret of thinking I could’ve, should’ve, done more.”

Codependent, but so what. It’s true. Eiji would never live again, even if he breathed. He’d look for Ash in every blonde man he saw on the street. He’d never leave New York. He’d die alone, regretful and begging for Ash in the afterlife. He’d buy a plot for himself in a cemetery in Cape Cod, in Ash’s hometown, where he’s sure Ash would be buried, and hope they met in Death since Life had been so cruel to the both of them.

Ash is bathed in orange, his eyes are intense. Eiji sees where the shadow of the wall cuts between them, making Ash untouchable, shrouding himself in darkness. And yet, and yet, he reaches into the shadows, into Eiji’s world, and holds him. And yet, and yet, Eiji reaches back, gripping at smoke that shouldn’t be tangible, but is.

A God made flesh because of love.

“You can’t,” Ash says, voice horrifically sad, the smile on his lips even sadder. “You have to live. You have to live because you have so much to live for. You are so much more than I ever will be. You’re good. You’re so good, Eiji. You deserve to be free. Without regrets.”

Eiji stares at him, his stubbornness growing, his ire fanning a flame he’s kept as an ember for far too long with this stupid blond American. “This is why I can’t sleep.”

“...What?” Ash tilts his head to the side, seemingly having forgotten their earlier conversation, Ash’s earlier pleadings for honesty.

“This,” Eiji barks out, an open palm slapping the ground because he can’t hit Ash, would never even dream of it. “This is why I can’t sleep. Your stupid self-sacrificial attitude. I have nightmares about this. I dream about you dying. I dream about you leaving. I dream about you on that table at the library where Sing found you, bleeding out and never reaching you. You were holding my letter. I almost killed you. If I wasn’t selfish, if I didn’t write that note, if I had just gone to Japan quietly and returned when I healed, I would’ve seen you again. Sing would’ve taken me to you,” He inhales, a rasping sound, like he’s dying. He might be. He feels like he is. He wants to. Ash is leaving and this time he won’t be able to follow him. Ash almost left and Eiji would’ve never been able to follow him even if he had fallen into the depths of a depression that felt more like a disease. A coward, always a coward. “He would’ve taken me to you and I would’ve convinced you to come to Japan, I would’ve. I could’ve done it. But I was stupid, I am stupid. I’m weak and selfish and stupid for thinking that I could’ve protected you.” He’s trembling, a riotous movement, a leaf in the roaring winds. “On top of this I dream about Shorter. I dream about Shorter and I dream about Yut-Lung and about being paralyzed and numb and tied up on that fucking bed and I,” He inhales again, choking on it and coughs into his hands. The words tumbled out and he didn’t realize, but he isn’t sure Ash is really listening, isn’t sure where the both of them are in the middle of the kitchen. “I can’t lose you. Not again. Not when all of this was my fault to begin with.”

“Eiji,” Ash’s voice is strained with his shock. Eiji knows he hasn’t told Ash about what happened in Golzine’s room, in those moments between being a man and being a victim, of living as Ash did, of experiencing a shred of his pain. He wants to know. He wants to know, wants to be able to empathize, would offer himself up to Golzine’s fucking ghost to be able to save Ash from the memories, the pain. “Eiji, nothing is your fault.”

“Then tell me what you were doing when Lao stabbed you,” Eiji demands, rearing up and snatching Ash’s gaze with his own. “Tell me what you were doing.”

Ash’s face cracks, realization coloring his eyes into the deepest of greens. Viridian and warmed by the light in the hallway.

“You were reading my letter,” Eiji sobs out, tired of lying, tired of pretending. He’s so tired. He just wants Ash to live, to be safe, to stop fighting. He wants to be held, to be cradled like he’s something precious. He wants to know that he has a purpose, that he isn’t a burden. He wants to go home, but home is where Ash is, so does that mean he already is home? Can you be home when the person you’ve equated it with is so far away all the time, even when they’re right in front of you? Eiji crumbles further. “I could’ve killed you.”

Ash is crying now, tears streaking haphazardly down his cheeks and plopping onto the floor where his legs are bracketed around Eiji’s folded ones. Eiji wants to swipe them away with his thumbs, wants to kiss his eyelids and tell him that he understands, that he knows he can’t stop him, that he knows, that he gets it, that he hates it, but he loves him too much to attempt to hold him back.

Is it codependency if he lets him go? Fire is meant to burn.

Pyrisous. Saved from fire.

Can Eiji do that? Can Eiji grip Ash’s smoke-like limbs and pull him from the fire? Is he strong enough?

“What do I do?” Ash asks, small and fragile. He looks eighteen in this moment, like a boy trying to navigate life after having not lived it and being dropped into it at its most volatile. “How can I convince you I’m not going to leave and die?”

“You can’t,” Eiji grasps his chest, over that bulletwound, wanting to dig his fingers into the raw, healing flesh there to feel something other than the fear of losing Ash again, but he can’t. “All you can do is go and come back to me. That’ll be more than enough.”

“How am I supposed to go when I know you’ll suffer like this?” Ash presses, voice trembling. “I never wanted to hurt you. I don’t want to hurt you.” 

They’re both so young. They’re both so horribly, terribly young. Eiji mourns for their last shreds of innocence. He grieves for Ash. He’s unsure if Ash can mourn, so he does it for him, too. He compiles it, holds it to his chest and bleeds with it.

Eiji shakes his head, “You could never hurt me. This isn’t hurting me. I’m… I’m hurting myself. I could never… I can’t hold you here. If you want to go, you’ll go. I will support you in whatever decision you come to. I couldn’t keep you here, I won’t. I’ll sit here, if this is where you want me, or I’ll fly back to Japan if that’s better, and I’ll wait for you. I’ll always wait for you to come back. My soul is always with you.”

Ash’s face cracks open again, something like awe settling in his features. Another crack of thunder and something like realization blankets Ash’s features. His eyes soften, his trembling stops. He’s different from before. He’s staring at Eiji as if he were some sort of godly being, descended down from heaven. It’s a heart wrenching look and it spurs Eiji into action. His limbs loosen enough, that paralytic feeling dissipates from his chest.

Eiji moves to wipe those tears from Ash’s cheeks. “I don’t want you to hide things from me anymore. You hid from me that day you got stabbed,” he moves his other hand to Ash’s cheek, cradling it as if it’d break if he moved too quickly, “You hide from me now, with this. I don’t need to know the details. I just need to know that you’ll come back.”

“I don’t know if I can promise that.” There’s something different in Ash’s voice. Something has changed between them, moved like a tectonic plate miles beneath the surface. Imperceptible, yet shoving the waters forward and slicing the grounds apart. Only it’s not distance, Eiji realizes. The ground is colliding, the plates are crashing into each other, the earth is shifting beneath their feet. His thumbs swipe over Ash’s cheekbones and he doesn’t understand what this feeling is, what this is doing to their already unsteady footing.

Eiji crumbles further, knowing that Ash can’t promise that to him. He knows it’s true and hates it. But he has to let Ash go. He has to. But if he has to, then Ash has to promise him. “You have to. You have to come back to me.”

“Why?” Ash questions, voice airy and hopeful and terribly quiet. The wind nearly covers his question. “Why do you need me to come back?”

Eiji’s lips move, tremble, crack open, “Because I…”

Ash’s hands cup the ones on his face, eyes imploring. He’s baiting Eiji into an answer, into a confession and Eiji is nothing more than a fish drawn to his lure.

“Because I love you,” He confesses, a terribly honest thing in the crackling of the morning’s thunderstorm. The rest of the paralyzation is gone; the needle removed from his neck, the body pulled off his chest, his hands unbound. “Because I’ve… I love you enough to let you go, but I’m… I’m selfish. I need you here, with me. My soul is yours. It always has been. If you go and don’t come back, how could I…” He trails off, exhaustion sinking deep into his chest, making his tongue heavy.

Ash’s eyes are shining, his mouth opening, lips trembling and raw and red, but Eiji prattles on before he can speak, “I don’t want anything from you. I don’t need the sentiment returned, I don’t need you to say that…” he hesitates over the word he’d so brazenly admitted seconds earlier, “I don’t need… Your kindness, even. I just… just knowing you’re alive is enough for me. Just knowing you’re breathing and that you’re safe is enough for me so I–”

His lips are soft, Eiji thinks to himself, mind quieting. The voices that normally took up space, both in English and Japanese, fizzle out into a soft hum before disappearing altogether. Ash’s lips always looked inviting and he had always thought they’d be soft, but the truth is that they’re very soft. Even in all his daydreaming, he had never thought farther than that. Even thinking that way made Eiji feel as though he were coveting something that wasn’t his to even glance at. He had built so much trust around this understanding that Eiji isn’t expecting anything from Ash, and that’s true, he doesn’t want anything, doesn’t need anything, that the thoughts would die as soon as they were born. But… There’s a fluttering thing, something that had always been there, Eiji realizes, settling in his chest. He almost misses the beating of it when it stops.

When that softness disappears, Eiji’s eyes, when did they shut?, flutter open.

“You shouldn’t love me,” Ash says immediately. Eiji’s lips are tingling and he’s confused. “But I’m… I’m selfish, too. I’m happy… that you do.”

“It’s true,” Eiji admits, easy. Why do his lips burn? He licks them, finds that they’re warm, somehow. Ash’s eyes track the movement. “I have, I think. I don’t think I’ll ever stop.”

“You’re the first person that doesn’t want anything from me,” Ash murmurs, eyes focused on Eiji’s lips. “You’re the first person who… who cares enough about me to take a bullet for me, to put me above their own safety.” He leans forward just a bit, eyes still tracing Eiji’s mouth. “It’s stupid that you do that. Your life should come above everyone else’s, but you still sit here and cry over me, mourn for me, want me to live and breathe. Of all people, me. It’s me you want. A murderer, a whore–”

“You’re not,” Eiji moans out, as if the words are bullets ripping through his flesh. They might as well be. He wants them to be. He’ll be a human shield if it means that Ash is safe. He was, once. He’d do it again. His chest aches.

“But with you,” Ash continues with ease, as if he had expected Eiji to fight against him. “With you I feel… I feel like I’m capable of being saved. It feels like I… like I have a chance. I want… I want to experience life with you. I want to go to Japan and see your hometown and meet your brat sister,” the words flood Eiji with a euphoria he’d only experienced when Ash woke from his medically-induced coma, the immediate danger subdued by stable heartbeats and enough transfusions to last him and Eiji a lifetime, “But I can’t do that. I have to finish this.”

“Then finish it,” Eiji agrees, hands pressing into Ash’s cheeks, holding him steadily in place, yet weak enough that he could leave if he wanted. “Finish it and come back to me.”

Ash’s hand slides across Eiji’s and cups the side of his face, fingers curling around the cut of his jaw and his thumb resting just beside Eiji’s mouth. He says nothing, but his eyes lid. He leans in further and their lips barely touch. Eiji watches the way that Ash’s eyes catch his own, searching for something. When he finds nothing, those blond lashes flutter shut and the millimeters of distance between the two of them slips away.

Eiji’s eyes widen and then follow Ash’s as he shuts them. He presses forward into their third kiss, he realizes, and feels the tension slip from his shoulders like water. The kiss is nothing more than a press of their lips until Ash’s own seem to relax. They slide over Eiji’s and his head tilts to the side. The fingers curling around his jaw slip further back to thread through his hair and Eiji sighs through his nose, a heavy thing, a thankful thing, a wanting thing.

Distantly, the thunder is still cracking overhead, but Ash’s lips on his are soft and pliant and Eiji is trying his best to stop himself from crying, but the tears won’t stop. 

Ash pulls away and Eiji opens his eyes. Ash’s pupils are blown, cheeks dusted a light shade of pink. He’s staring at Eiji with such awe, with such adoration, that Eiji can only stare back. He wants nothing more than to see this face for the rest of his life, he decides. He wants nothing more than to hold Ash’s hand as they walk into the fire together with the understanding that maybe, just maybe, they can both save each other from it.

“I know you have to go,” Eiji murmurs, staring into the rawness of Ash’s expression and understanding that this must be love he’s seeing in Ash’s eyes. “But please come back to me.”

“I will,” Ash promises, love in his eyes, hope in his voice, a promise sealed by lips just moments before. “I swear it.”