Work Text:
They're sitting on the steps behind the Chang Dai when Ash suggests it. Shorter has a vague idea of it, based on a distant memory of some chapter book Nadia had read him when he was younger. It involves a lot of laughing and blood and a knife (Shorter tries not to think about why Ash needs one when he's just a kid), and Shorter holds in his hiss when Ash drags the blade over his palm.
Ash laughs at him, and Shorter watches as he cuts his own. He drops the knife like it’s nothing, and then he grabs Shorter's hand firmly and shakes it. Ash’s hand is cold and slim and pale, probably the opposite of his.
Shorter doesn't know what it means, exactly, and his hand is a mess of someone else's blood mixed with his, but he likes the way his stomach hurts when Ash proudly announces that they're bound together forever.
The cut scabs over within days, and Shorter keeps picking at the skin. Nadia slaps his hand away when she catches him. He blushes when she asks why he's smiling at his cut like that.
Eventually, like all (most) things, the scab heals and all that's left to prove it is a thin white scar. Not really noticeable, hidden among the wrinkles and callouses of Shorter's palm, but he traces the line more times than he can count. He’s not sure why it gives him butterflies.
The next time they see each other, they sneak out to a field when the sky is gray and no one is out. When Shorter sits in the grass next to him, Ash grabs Shorter's wrist and turns his palm up. He traces his thumb over the scar, then shoves his own hand in Shorter's face. His is still a scab. He had picked at it so much it didn't have a chance to heal. Ash didn't have anyone to stop him from picking, like Shorter had Nadia. It makes Shorter's stomach hurt, so he tells Ash he can stay with them, like he always does, and Ash says he can't, like he always does.
“What’s it mean?” Shorter asks. When Ash prompts him with a head tilt (Shorter thinks no one should be allowed to look that good doing something as simple as a nod), he continues, “The blood brothers thing.”
Ash scoffs, standing up, and Shorter winces. The blonde doesn’t notice it behind the sunglasses, just goes on to throw his arms out. “It means that since I’ve got your blood in my veins, and vice versa, we have to be loyal to each other. In other words, you’re stuck with me forever.”
Shorter doesn’t know if there’s any logic behind having each other’s blood in their systems, but the way Ash grins at him makes him feel like someone, and he doesn’t think there’s anyone he’d rather be stuck with. So he rolls his eyes, because he doesn’t know how to say I love you .
Ash laughs, grabs his hand, and Shorter swears you can feel his heart beating in his palm. He’s sure Ash must be able to feel it. It’s pulsing as if Ash’s blood in Shorter’s veins is trying to seep through their hands and back into him.
He pulls Shorter up and starts running, yelling insults between his laughs when Shorter trips after him. And so what if Shorter’s heart jumps when Ash calls him an idiot? Yeah, he’s whipped for his best friend, but that doesn’t seem like such a problem when Ash makes him pay for ice cream and gives him a kiss on the cheek in return.
Eiji comes out of nowhere. His hair is soft and dark, not damaged by a bad bleach job done with your sister in a too-small restaurant bathroom after hours. He’s got these doe eyes and wears bright sweaters with little embroidered animals over the heart. He’s so perfect it makes Shorter sick.
There’s no warning, no time to prepare for Ash leaving him. Shorter doesn’t get a chance to say goodbye. Not the way he wants.
A month after Eiji comes, Ash comes over and lays in Shorter's bed without asking. Like it's his home. He’s holding Shorter’s 3DS above his head, and Shorter realizes that Ash is probably on his Animal Crossing game. Shorter made him a character two years before.
He stands with his back against the wall, for a minute. Shorter thinks vaguely that he has an angel in his bedroom, the way Ash’s hair falls on the sheets and sunlight spills onto his neck. He could almost pretend it’s before, if it weren’t for the question burning the back of his throat.
“Are we still blood brothers?” It bursts out of him before he wants it to, his voice hoarse, and he swears time freezes.
Ash looks at him out of the corner of his eye. “What?” He says it like a statement, forces a laugh, but Shorter knows he remembers when he narrows his eyes.
“You know,” he says, holding his hand out. And Ash snorts.
“Dude, I was thirteen. It’s just a story. I thought it was cool back then.”
And he’s right, Shorter knows that. It’s just a story, and they were just kids, and Shorter hates that he loves Ash the same way he did when he was fourteen.
Ash and Eiji start dating four months after that. Ash stops asking Shorter to hang out weeks before it.
Shorter wishes he had more to offer than sturdy hands and purple hair and Animal Crossing. Maybe, if he had just done something different, or if he wasn’t so scared, Ash would still be his.
Before Eiji, Shorter had told Ash that he deserved more than an idiot best friend and a room with a creaky floor above a three star chinese restaurant, and Ash had told Shorter that he didn’t want more than that.
He was lying, though, because he also told Shorter he was stuck with him forever and then he was the first to leave.
A year passes like that, and another, and Shorter learns to joke about third wheeling so he doesn’t cry and pretends their blood pact never happened. He goes on a few dates (nothing comes out of them). They don’t like the jokes Ash does, and they scrunch their noses at his faded dye and new nose piercing.
Shorter doesn’t mind. He didn’t really want anyone except Ash anyway.
Nadia’s girlfriend moves in, and Shorter thinks with a bitter laugh that he can’t escape third wheeling.
He misses Ash, a lot, but he still has Nadia and Animal Crossing and his scar. And maybe he still cries when the villagers in Animal Crossing ask where Ash is. And maybe he doesn’t want the scar anymore, because every time he looks at it it hurts like an open cut, but he’s stuck with it. So he learns to love it again.
Ash and Eiji come to the Chang Dai on a date, one night, and that’s when Shorter sees the ring on Eiji’s finger. He’s real fucking glad his sunglasses hide the tears in his eyes when he squeezes a “congratulations” around the lump in his throat.
Shorter doesn't have Ash anymore, and probably not any of his blood either.
But he still has that scar on his palm.