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Eiji wakes slowly, blinking that fuzzy film from his eyes as he presses his head down into the pillow. The alarm clock light blinks, too bright, shouting 1.09am into the back of his skull until he shuts his eyes against it. He scrubs the remnants of sleep from his cheeks, and then he’s blinking again, and Ash is stood above him in the careful silence of the night. He seems tense, taught with something intentionally unreadable, and Eiji frowns out into the dark.
“Ash.” He says, voice soft, sleep-warmed, like honey.
Ash thaws a little at that, and his shoulders slump down low. Eiji wishes he could press them up and lift him back to his full height; he would do anything to fight the weariness of the world that weighs down his shoulders like led, immovable. Ash watches him, illuminated by the hazy glow seeping through thin curtains as he is in turn, and Eiji feels every breath somewhere deep in his chest.
“Will you come with me?” Ash asks, eventually, and leaves the room when Eiji nods. Eiji feels the once-clutch of sleep fall from his shoulders like silk.
-
Eiji steps out onto the roof and into that summer chill, and is drawn like a moth, like something happily brainless, to Ash stood at the edge of it. He’s staring out at what has always seemed, to Eiji, to be intrinsically his city; his bright lights, dark corners, the chaos that he controls just as it controls him. The breeze is cool, a caress, and it rustles their clothes, hair – catching in the impossible bright of Ash’s. Even with the sun absent, he glows, but there’s something haunting about it, and solitary. Ash allows this, encourages it even, but Eiji wonders if it ever stops feeling so lonely.
Ash turns to him after a while and simply looks. Eiji returns it, holds back a wince, gives him a small smile until finally the corner of Ash’s lips twist too. He feels relief at this, and allows himself to pretend they’re not who they are, or where, that they’re alone in this horrible, sprawling city, heads upturned to the stars.
Ash smiles again and pulls up a bottle of something amber that catches in the dim light, like gold bottled. Eiji’s head is full of Ash. He pours a shot and throws it back, leaving Eiji briefly alone, staring at the pale column of his throat. Then he’s tilting the bottle towards him, an offer he has only ever refused, but this time Eiji looks, properly, at the sad boy before him, and thinks how desperately unfair it is that they can’t lose themselves entirely. They can, though, maybe just for tonight, so Eiji nods once and takes the glass from Ash, balancing it lightly in his fingers with a challenge in his eyes. Ash pauses, assesses with a paranoia that even alcohol can’t wholly dim, and then begins to pour.
He’s sloppy, with the alcohol burning in his stomach and the high of something unique to this one night, and the whiskey drips down the side of the glass in fat droplets. It’s sticky against his fingers. He downs the drink too, ignores the heat it drags down his throat, places the glass down on the ledge. Ash smiles at him again, and it goes to his head, and Eiji feels now that it is just the two of them, against everyone and everything, against the world and the sun and the stars.
-
They drink more glasses under the solid moon until Eiji feels dopey, slow with it, the lights of the city blurring into streaks of colour around them. The alcohol has loosened him, like a doll on strings, but still his focus is entirely on Ash: his smile; his laugh; his too-fast, too-wary eyes; his every word before it has even left his lips. Eiji feels something close to besotted, and lets himself fall into its soft hands, to have and to hold.
They’re laughing with each other again, but then Ash stops and Eiji feels a tug on the strings. He stops.
“What?” He laughs, gentle, eyelids heavy against the almost black of his eyes. Ash turns back to the city, lips tight, and Eiji has to keep himself from reaching out, from cooing and smoothing and fixing the cracks on delicate china. Before he can, Ash is back, face carefully empty in a way that Eiji hates, but warm, too, in the way that he loves.
“Dance with me.” He says, and there’s a pleasant swoop in Eiji’s stomach that feels a little like flying, like he’s thrown himself from the ledge and into the lights, daring the wind to take him. He laughs again, with eyes shut tight against the suddenly too-bright light of everything around him.
“Of course.”
Then Ash is tugging him away from the ledge and they come together in the middle of the roof. They sway slightly as they fumble against each other, like other teenagers do, and then Ash is tugging him in with a hand on his waist, and he clutches the fabric on his shoulder as though to tear through it. Their hands clasp together, sticky with the heat and the whiskey.
Eiji can feel Ash shaking, with the alcohol and the nerves and the newness of it all, and Eiji knows that he is too, lightly, a thrumming beneath his skin. They step back and forth to music neither of them can hear, and then they’re stumbling, laughing, squeezing so tightly it hurts. Ash spins him until the world is a blur around them both, and he’s tripping, and Ash is too, but they right themselves at the last moment with chests heaving and eyes dew-damp.
Then Ash is kissing him, and that stickiness is like sweet wine on his lips: intoxicating and heady until all he can do is breathe into it, and kiss Ash in the way that he wishes he could protect him, harder, harder, harder.
Ash is clutching at him now, rumbling where Eiji touches him like there’s something hot beneath the solid plates of his skin, molten. He moves to his neck, pressing that heat and those promises and something that feels concerningly like a goodbye into his skin, insistent as Eiji runs his fingers up into that golden hair, tugging and pressing with a desperation he feels only Ash can free him from. There’s something hungry to it, and so sad, and still so lonely, but Eiji surrenders to it wholly, and feels Ash, too, melt into him.
-
Eiji is sat on the ledge now, and Ash is between his legs humming a song Eiji has never heard. For a moment all that busy city bustle dies away, and it is just Ash and his song, and Eiji listening as if it’s the first and last thing he’ll ever hear. He strokes his fingers through Ash’s hair, nails against his scalp, and Ash draws gentle patterns on his arms, his sides. Each one feels like a masterpiece.
He’s dimly aware of the fall at his back; more so of Ash at his front. He thinks briefly of the fall, of the wind ripping at his hair and clothes, so loud it drowns out everything else, and then a silence, and then nothing. He thinks intensely of Ash, of his face finally calm, of how when Eiji swings his leg just so, idly across Ash’s lower back, there’s just skin instead of hard metal. He knows he won’t fall, but that if he did, he would take Ash with him.
Ash pours out another glass and sips half, Eiji watching the soft wetness it leaves behind. He holds the rest out to Eiji, pressing it to his lips until Eiji tilts his head back and lets it trickle down his throat. He swallows, and Ash watches.
A sudden breeze ruffles Ash’s hair like Eiji wants to, so he does, enraptured by the soft, blonde strands slipping through his fingers like sand. New York has made Eiji painfully aware of his own mortality and excruciatingly aware of Ash’s, and now more than ever he resents it, here in this simple peace with Ash’s golden hair in his hands. Still, the Ash of his mind is so strong, so everything, that sometimes it feels impossible for anything to take him down, and even more impossible that the world could keep turning without him.
In those moments, like this moment, he comforts himself, lies to himself, and imagines a world where their youth keeps them invincible. It’s easier this way, to remain in a dream, to never face how much he wants to protect Ash and how he knows that he can’t.
“Do you ever wish you could fly?”
Ash smiles – that familiar, fond little thing. “Yes.”
Eiji grins, lets himself tip back, face upturned to the stars. Ash’s hands slide around him, firm against his back. “What do you think it would feel like?”
Ash’s brows furrow in an expression Eiji knows, by now, that one where he pretends he doesn’t already know the answer, that he didn’t create it. “Like this,” he settles on, then, “Like dying.”
Eiji makes a despairing little sound, something like a moan, like hurt, and Ash shushes him softly, hands sweeping warmth up and down his back. He frowns, and watches Ash panic, hands moving faster.
“Do you really think that?” Eiji whispers. The hands still.
No, Eiji wants to hear; knows, regardless, that he won’t. “Like this, then.” Ash murmurs, “Just this.”
Eiji knows he could argue, could scream and beg and weep, could rip out his hair and lie formless on this roof, with Ash, until everything ends. Instead he focusses on the warmth of the summer breeze around them, of Ash’s hands on his waist, of that sweet look on his face, brows furrowed in a concern Eiji wishes was for himself. So Eiji smiles at him, hopes it feels like the sun, and throws his arms around Ash’s neck with a vigour that pushes them back, away from the ledge and into each other.
“Just this.” He echoes. His smile falls once it is behind Ash’s back, but then he forces it back until his eyes crinkle at the corners, as if Ash can see it even now, and will notice its absence. Ash squeezes him tightly, breathes deeply, and suddenly Eiji can’t take it. He lets go and looks into Ash’s beautiful green eyes for what feels like an age.
“Let’s dance.” He offers, and Ash follows him with a smile.
-
They had danced, had jumped with and around each other until the sheer intensity of it had stolen the breath from their lungs and returned it to the concrete trees. Ash had been smiling, and he was too, and it was easy. Ash had spun, earlier, had tipped and veered to the side until Eiji caught him in his arms and kept him there, safe, like a baby. He had grumbled, but Eiji laughed and laughed until he couldn’t anymore, until Ash settled into his arms and was laughing too.
Now they are swaying again, but Eiji’s arms are up around Ash’s back, palms splayed across his shoulder blades and pressing himself into him. Ash’s hands are clutching at the back of his shirt, and his head is cradled on Eiji’s shoulder, his breaths warm and damp against his neck. Eiji wishes he could keep him like this; laments, despairs, that he can’t.
“I wish this was all there was.” Ash mumbles, low enough that Eiji has to strain to catch it, strains further when he understands it. Then he’s feeling something deep and raw that once he feared was pity, but has now realised is the ache of pain shared. He would suck it all up if he could, in and in and in until it presses against the inside of his skin, ready to burst, to pop.
“It can be.” He lies, to himself too, and ignores that dreadful stinging in his eyes.
“Can it?” Ash whispers, soft and child-like and Eiji aches. He nods with a violence that scares him, hands clawing at the unbending strength of Ash’s back as if they are not close enough, as if they can’t be until they become one, welded like iron into something inseparable just because he wills it.
“Maybe if we never sleep, this night will never end.” He whispers, and it feels like a dream, like a fairy tale, and he wants so desperately to live it. “We can stay here as long as we want.”
Ash listens, quietly and attentively, and Eiji keeps holding him close. He doesn’t believe it, Eiji can tell, and it hurts that he can’t fault him for it. He wonders hopelessly whether he can convince himself.
“What will we do, when it does end?” Ash asks, and Eiji pushes him back so that he can grip onto his face, nails digging too deep into pale skin, leaving sad little crescent marks, but Ash doesn’t wince and Eiji doesn’t care. Ash stares back at him with that fire, that one thing that is solely and always his, and suddenly it’s so wonderful that Eiji has to kiss him again – a gentle, tender little thing that leaves his lips tingling, more intense than before, than the alcohol swimming in their bellies.
He doesn’t pull back and neither does Ash, mouths simply pressed together until it becomes painful, until the strain for oxygen turns their cheeks a ruddy red. Only then does Eiji relent, and rests his forehead against Ash’s as they pant heavy, too heavy, breaths into the heat between them.
“It won’t, because I’m here, and I won’t ever let you go.” He says, and somehow, despite the horrible improbability of it all, it comes out as a promise. And then they stay contentedly trapped in this one moment, foreheads still resting together, becoming wet with sweat from the humid summer air. At last, Ash smiles and shuts his eyes, and Eiji follows him, and they stand in the darkness together.
“We’ll stay here then.” Ash whispers, and for now, it’s enough.