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As horrible as it sounded, Eiji was almost used to Ash’s night terrors. They weren’t every night, but they were often enough that most nights he found himself woken by crying, or hysterical muttering, or, occasionally, screams of terror.
He never imagined complaining when they happened. Eiji just held him tighter, brushed the blonde strands away from his face, and whispered quietly to him, reassuring him that he was safe and Golzine was gone.
Tonight was a particularly bad one. Ash usually laid still when he was having his nightmares, but tonight he was thrashing. “No, no, no…” Ash muttered, strained whimpers escaping his lips and his hands white-knuckling the bedsheets. “Please stop.” While Eiji was used to these, it still broke his heart a little bit whenever he saw Ash so vulnerable and terrified, like the child he never got to be.
Eiji sat up, moving closer to him in their shared bed. “Ash,” he said quietly, as speaking too loud would spook him. “Ash.” He gently shook Ash’s shoulders, and his eyes flew open. They were wild, unfocused, and he was looking at Eiji but not registering who he was. “Ash, hey, it’s okay, you’re fine, it’s just me —”
Ash yelled, and grabbed Eiji by the arms and kicked him, hard, off the side of the bed. Eiji yelped as he flew into the nightstand, knocking down the lamp resting atop it and landing with an exploding pain in his wrist. He was vaguely aware of glass shards in his arm and blood trickling down to his hand, but his wrist was all but screaming in pain. “Ash !”
The commotion had startled Ash back into consciousness, and he blinked for a moment before realizing what had just happened. “Holy shit—Eiji!” Ash was out of bed in a second, kneeling down beside Eiji without paying any mind to the glass shards all over the floor. “I’m so sorry, I’m so fucking sorry—”
“It’s okay, it’s not your fault,” Eiji said, using his uninjured hand to cup Ash’s jaw. “Are you okay?”
“Am I okay? Are you okay?” Ash was panicking for an entirely different reason now, looking at the blood traveling down Eiji’s arm.
Well, there really wasn’t much use in sugarcoating it. “I think my wrist is sprained,” Eiji said, letting out a small cry when Ash took his wrist in his hands and experimentally moved it a little. Ash flinched, refusing to meet Eiji’s eyes. “Ash—”
“Come on, we need to get you to a hospital.” Ash took his other wrist and led him to the door, leaving no room for argument.
The car ride and hospital trip was mostly spent in silence, Ash muttering quiet apologies now and then and Eiji not knowing what else to say to stop the spiralling of self-blame Ash was suffering from. He would say it wasn’t his fault until he ran out of breath, but he didn’t know if Ash would even believe him.
The doctor patched up the scratches he got from the glass shards and said Eiji’s wrist was indeed sprained, instructing him to wear a brace for two weeks and seek physical therapy if it didn’t feel any better.
Ash was quiet again on the car ride back, but he kept sneaking glances at Eiji’s wrist brace. Well, not that sneaky, because Eiji noticed every time he did it. “Hey, Ash. I don’t want you to blame yourself for this.”
“How could I not?” Ash said, his grip tightening on the wheel and his eyes focused firmly on the road. “I told you I’d protect you. I vowed to hurt anyone who laid a hand on you. Now I’m just as bad as them.”
“Hey, don’t be so dramatic,” Eiji said with a wave. “I’ve been shot, stabbed, grazed, poisoned… I can handle a little sprain.”
Ash sighed. “You don’t get it.”
“No, I do,” Eiji said, turning to him fully. Ash still wouldn’t look at him. “You feel bad and blame yourself for not being able to escape your past, and now it’s hurt me. Is that about what you’re thinking?” Ash was silent. “I’ll take that as a yes.”
“Can we drop this?” Ash said quietly, and the raw sadness in his voice made Eiji’s heart hurt.
“For now, yeah.”
“Thank you.”
They were silent for a few more moments, and as they were nearing the house, Eiji said, “Ash?”
“Yeah?”
“I love you.”
Ash let out a shuddering breath. He pulled into the driveway and put the car in park, but kept his hands gripping the steering wheel and eyes firmly forward. “You don’t have to deal with it, you know. My baggage. I know I asked if you could stay with me forever, but… I don't want that for you if we’re finally living peacefully and it becomes me that hurts you.”
Eiji unbuckled his seatbelt and turned fully to Ash, gently prying his hands off the steering wheel and holding them in his own. Ash tentatively looked at him, his bangs hiding the fear and shame reflecting in his eyes. “Ash, I need you to understand that you’ve never done a thing to hurt me intentionally. Every bullet I took for you, every time I was captured, every time I nearly died, that was because I wanted to be by your side. I chose that. So I don’t want you to blame yourself for this, because it was part of the deal.” Eiji lowered his head to see Ash’s eyes better, and smiled softly at him. “And if I could go back? I would do it all again.”
A small smile crept onto Ash’s face. “All of it?”
Eiji laughed. “Okay, maybe I’d be fine with missing an event or two.”
That drew a small, breathy chuckle out of Ash, relieving some of the anxiety tying Eiji’s chest into knots. He pulled Eiji into possibly the gentlest hug that had been shared between the two, pressing a lingering kiss to the side of his head. “I love you too.”
Eiji lingered happily in his embrace for a few moments, and Ash rested his head on top of his, gently rubbing his arm up and down. “Hey.”
“Yeah?”
“Maybe we should go inside.”
Ash glanced at his watch and cringed. “Yeah. Good idea.”
Reluctantly, they untangled themselves from the embrace and climbed out of the car, Eiji quick to rejoin Ash at his side walking up to the front door. “Hey, I should make some tea.”
“Not with that wrist!”
“Aw, then you can make it for me.”
“It’s 3 in the morning, Eiji.”
“Maybe if you drank some jasmine tea, you wouldn’t have such a stick up your ass.”
“A stick up my—”
“Are those grey hairs I spot? Geez, Ash, you need to relax a little.”
“Wh—shut the hell up, you old geezer!”
All in all, drinking jasmine tea at 3:27 am after a night terror and a trip to the hospital was not the most notable thing they’d ever done, but Ash made a point to make a big deal about it anyways.
And Eiji wouldn’t have it any other way.