Chapter Text
Eiji looks around himself, looks at the floor, scattered with white tees that may or may not be clean, crushed sodie cans, and sour jeans that seem to have more rips in them every time Ash returns home. If he ever returns home.
(Ash is not home.)
Socks with holes at the toes are at the foot of his bed and some are dangling over the headboard, missing their partners. His bedsheets have scrunched to one side. He has newspaper clippings for blankets and hardcover novels for throw pillows, all tagged with fluorescent pink-yellow-orange-green sticky notes smudged with blue chicken-scratch. There’s a thrice bitten pizza slice laying on his nightstand collecting dust. He must have lost his appetite halfway through. It’s been missing for some time now.
Eiji picks it up by its crust and inspects it. There’s a real gross urge to take a bite out of it— just in case it’s still good. He knocks on the back for good measure and it’s hard as a rock. Eiji immediately thinks of his poor teeth. He tosses the pie into an empty Dollar Tree plastic bag with the other half-bitten things and sighs.
Eiji curls up in Ash’s unmade bed; wraps himself in stories of dead bodies and a suspect still on the loose. He turns his back against the mattress. Something under him crunches. He lifts his body up and finds receipts: one from the Barnes & Noble around the corner (with authors whose names Eiji cannot pronounce), another from a 7-11 for a small Slurpee and a Slim Jim, and the high-end restaurant Ash had taken him to two weeks before. Eiji squints at the total and feels a stab in his heart. He thinks about tuition rates back in Japan, about his mother’s diamonds and pearls, and how he should not have been such a goddamned glutton that night: fancy squid, something in French, two steaks charred medium, and a bite-sized chocolate cake with quote, “real” gold flakes.
(Does gold digest? There wasn't any treasure in the toilet the following morning.)
How dare Ash treat him. How dare he be kind to him. How dare he spend so much embezzled money that did not belong to him, but to some slimy bald creep still rocking an ungodly Magnum P.I. in the twenty-first century.
This makes Eiji feel better, sort of.
He crumples the receipts into balls for ammunition later when they’re bickering over air and reenacting Friday Night SmackDowns.
And he waits. He waits for him to come barreling through that door— any minute now. Eiji prays that today he’s unscathed, though scathed is better than not coming home at all. He listens to the tick of the arms at his wrist and wishes for Ash’s around him. Eiji hugs himself and uses his imagination instead— feels Ash pressed against him, breath blowing on his neck, touching him hot. He wonders how Ash can sleep here so cold; if he sleeps at all. Eiji wouldn’t know. He always dozes off first and leaves him alone with his thoughts.
Imagination again. Ash asks to sleep in his bed. Eiji doesn’t say no. Ash warms his toes between his legs and Eiji lets him. He lets Ash hug him instead of pillows those bitter nights when he isn’t there to extinguish cold-hot hellfires. Ash stokes him, rests his chin in the carve of his neck-shoulder, whispers something Eiji can't quite make out. His mind is a map and phonetics zip through the nerves of his memory, trying to match evaporated words to something familiar, something dear. Before Eiji can test his guesses, Ash is respiring deep. Tranquil. Asleep.
Tonight, he’ll offer a spot, himself. He’ll listen. He’ll wait for Ash to drift off in his hold and stow away nightmares for dreams or white noise.
“A squatter.” Caught.
“Did I— What time is it?”
Ash sits down at the foot of the bed, shrugging his crewneck off. He throws it onto the floor.
No new cuts or bruises. Only scars. Eiji lets out a shaky breath.
“A little after ten. I got back just now.”
“I’ll make something.”
“That’s fine. Not hungry.” It’s as though Ash can feel Eiji pelting his back with worry. He takes a different approach. “Had pizza with the guys before I walked up to the apartment.”
Eiji feels a stupid, fleeting betrayal. He reaches for the balled-up receipts in his pockets, ready to dote. Ash turns around to look at him—timid, fretful— to see how he had taken his little white lie, though to Eiji, it was gesso spread out on an enormous canvas.
“What are you doing on here anyway? Looking for a change of pace?” A smirk. “Sure, I’ll be glad to hole up in your nice, tidy bed if you wanna switch. You're so kind.”
In the dark, Ash looks like one of his half-bitten things: Chewed up, spat out. Shadows cut where there should be flesh. There’s only space. Emptiness. Dusk. His spine is a string of marbles and his torso a collection of steep ridges that he’s learning to climb down from— all seal-covered with pale, marred skin stretched beyond belief. His gaze glows green, the only color he has left to offer. Experiences make them vivid. Death makes them shine. What have they seen?
Can they see him? The swirling sorrow rippling in his eyes? His jaw, slack, and his hands reaching, shaking? Eiji doesn't reach for his pockets, no, he reaches out to Ash; opting to throw petals instead of bullets. His face in his hands, Eiji inspects each pore carefully. He counts every freckle and makes sure each of them are in their right place— that nobody had rearranged them. Erased him.
“Not hurt?”
“No. I'm not.”
“Anywhere?”
“What? Want me to put it down in writing? Geez. I'm alright.”
“Ash.”
“You’re bein’ a real worrywart again.” Ash stretches, lifts his arms up, forgets about the nick on his rib. The nerves in Eiji's body fires all at once. Red! It flashes like crosswalk signals. Danger! Danger! Danger! “A-Okay.”
Eiji gathers Ash into his chest and combs the hair at the nape of his neck with the gentle rake of his fingers; it's a gesture he's practiced to muscle memory. He can feel Ash. He can feel the decompress of his body, the bundle of bones laying on his lap, undoing, unbecoming. This is all it takes.
“The truth, next time.”
“I didn’t mean to—” Every element squeezes out of Ash: water, air, his ground, his fire. He is nothing but the frame of his curved body, once so strong, now weak as the pale moonlight eating him away. “I didn’t mean to become this person.”
“I know,” Eiji says, building him up again.
"I'm terrible."
“You're here.”
And they lay together whole—bones and flesh and fat and fire and all— amongst shredded things. Crumpled things. Halves. Pieces. They cling to each other like lifelines in their tears, waiting for the morning sun.
“Breakfast tomorrow. Anything you want.”
“I just want sleep.”
“How do pancakes sound? I'll put a lot of blueberries. Lots of syrup.”
Ash’s stare is liquid. He ruminates, puts up a pointless fight. Then he surrenders to the tide and they meld together.
“Okay.” Again, into Eiji's chest, from his own, "Okay."
Ash tries again.