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There was a time Sing despaired of ever seeing Eiji smile, truly smile, again. At first, they were all just trying to breathe, trying to survive when everything was falling apart. He could still remember the crushing weight of impossible leadership, trying and failing and still desperately holding on with teeth and fingernails because what else could he do? Eiji had kept him afloat then, his quiet support the only thing standing between Sing and the impossibility of the task that had somehow fallen to him. How could he replace Shorter? Without Lao? Without Ash? Without… Even now, Sing could feel the chittering panic of a child barely old enough for high school somehow trying to keep Chinatown running…
Had he really punched Yut-Lung? It seemed insane now.
Looking back, winning should have been impossible. It made sense that there was a cost, even a high one. He’d feared at first that Ash would pay it with his love. That Eiji would die, and Ash would somehow live. And then they would all pay. The bullet that injured Eiji nearly killed Ash. It certainly did far more damage ripping through the bubbly, lovable Japanese kid’s guts than it would have tearing into Ash himself. He had been… it had been a sight to see. He could still close his eyes and picture Chinatown in flames. He had no doubt it would have happened, if Eiji had died. Not even the ghost of Shorter Wong could have stopped him.
Sing had been fourteen. And Ash had been this golden emblem of strength and brilliance and leadership. He had utterly idolized him. The more he knew about who Ash was, what he had survived, the more he couldn’t help but see him as invincible. Watching the untouchable Lynx, the guy Shorter had talked about for as long as Sing could remember, the Green Eyed Devil, The Wildcat of New York, crumble bit by bit...It had been terrifying. And yet, it made him love him, just a little. He couldn’t help it. You didn’t love a statue or a god, but a human being…
After everything… he’d hated him for a while. Hated him for how badly he had hurt Eiji. But also for how much he had disappointed Sing. He wasn’t perfect after all. And Sing had needed him to be perfect. He had needed the hope he had placed firmly on Ash’s shoulders.
Sing put Ash on an impossible pedestal. He hadn’t been sure in his confused adolescent brain if what he felt was love or attraction or something else entirely. But the tragic love story just made him more… something… in Sing’s eyes. He looked at Ash and saw a hero, like someone out of a comic book. And comic book heroes never die for good.
Eiji hadn’t seen a hero though. To Eiji, Ash had always been human. Just a kid who needed to be saved, needed to be loved. Just like Sing. Just like all of them, really. Eiji had always been incredible in his capacity for love.
Even now, the thought made him smile.
That night, with the heat baking his skin and his life held in the balance, Sing had believed Ash must be immortal. Somehow, against all odds, against all reason, like the superhero Sing wanted him to be, Ash had survived. And Eiji had survived. And somehow they had won. And it should have been perfect. But it wasn’t. Because Sing was too young and too stupid and too blind to see the simmering hatred in his brother’s heart for what it really was. Fear.
And so, because Sing was impulsive. Because Sing was incompetent. Because Sing was fucking fourteen… Ash had paid, not with his love but with his life.
And Eiji paid with his everything else.
Sing had been angry with Ash for a very very long time. It was easier, maybe, than hating himself. ‘Why?’ he wanted to scream ‘Why not get help? Why not call Alex or Bones or 911?’ But he knew. He knew why. He knew that Ash had sent his love to another continent never to be seen again. And without Eiji… he didn’t have anything left. Best friend, brother, protege, enemy, future--it was all gone. And Eiji would be safe. Without Ash to hurt with it, there was no reason to go after Eiji. Without Ash, Eiji wasn’t someone who mattered. Not to anyone but Ash.
And Sing.
He knew that Ash had been the last casualty in a war he’d tried to call off. He knew that deep down, his perfect comic book hero was a wounded child who gasped his last breath trying to stem the tide of violence and gang war and overwhelming grief. He knew that he’d gotten Eiji’s letter. He knew that the bastard died with a smile on his face.
And it almost killed Eiji. It almost destroyed him. Sing had watched him fight, just to survive those first months. He had watched him struggle to cope, his smile dying slowly until the bubbly boy was gone and a sad, quiet man had taken his place.
After the incident with the pills, Sing had moved in with Eiji. He didn’t think he’d ever been more afraid than the night he found him, blue-lipped and barely breathing. He’d lost so much. And suddenly Eiji was the thing he couldn’t bear to lose. Facing that broken grief on a daily basis was breathtakingly agonizing, but he had to try. He owed it to someone, even if he didn’t really understand who. He had to be there, getting him to eat, forcing him to shower, taking away bottles and pills and the hope of an easy end to his pain. He did it in part to try to help hold him together. He did it in part because he could face the loss of another good man because he had been too stupid to see the truth of the hatred in his brother’s eyes. He had done it at first as penance, as a way to make it up to Ash’s ghost, a way to assuage his own guilt. But over the years…
Eiji was a good man. Kind and gentle and wise. He was beautiful too. Not like those chiseled statues whose hearts had seemed hard as the marble their perfect faces were carved from. Eiji was beautiful like wildflowers or housecats resting in the sun. He was approachably beautiful. He’d heard Ash say it once. His soul was beautiful. And he allowed himself to lean on Sing, to confide in him. And Sing loved him for it. It was impossible to live with Eiji and not see what it was about him that Ash had loved. It was impossible to not love him himself.
He knew he’d never wrest Eiji’s heart from Ash’s ghost, but it didn’t stop him from wanting to.
He still remembered the night he’d given into temptation, thrown himself at the older man. He’d been eighteen and still so broken by the pressure, the grief, the pain. He’d been drawn to Eiji’s near exquisite mourning. He had tried to kiss it away, to let Eiji pretend for just one night, that he could hold his lover in his arms. To let Sing pretend too.
And for one glorious moment, he’d thought, he’d really thought, that he, Sing Soo-Ling could compete with a shadow. And then Eiji had gently, kindly, and very firmly pulled away. They’d stayed friends after, though Sing had found his own apartment. Even if he rarely stayed in it, it represented a break, an acknowledgement of what would never be. It took years for him to be able to look at Eiji without feeling a longing for the impossible tugging at his heart.
But, Eiji was his best friend. He couldn't even resent him for it. A good thing in the long run, he supposed, since it was Eiji that had introduced him to Aki. When he first met her he’d been convinced of his own vast maturity. He was closer to her age than Eiji’s. But to him she was a child, innocently blind to the horrors of the world, unfamiliar with death and loss and the desperate fight just to stay afloat in a raging storm that seemed to have no end.
She was sweet. And he liked her well enough, but he thought her world’s away from him then. Now? The almost-five years that had separated them hardly seemed important. And it had been a very long time since he had lived that life of fear and rage and pain.
Ash had bought him that freedom in a way. He’d paid for more than a freedom Eiji loathed with his sacrifice. He’d also bought space, choices, peace for his own men and the men Sing still thought of as Shorter’s.
He had never been sure if he’d been crushed or relieved when Eiji’s father’s health finally took an irrevocable turn for the worse and Eiji was forced to return to Japan once again. He still flew to New York on occasion, for his work. They always met for dinner or drinks when they could, but distance gave Sing what willpower never could. The time to heal.
And when Akira came to NYU for college and hunted him down to gift him with an obnoxious stuffed penguin, a letter from Eiji, and a demand that he show her around New York City for real, he finally saw them both differently. If she was no longer a child, he was no longer a street-punk gang boss. He had a respectable job. Most of the time. And she… she was lovely. And strong. And kind. Like Eiji. They were good friends for years, until she got sick of his protectiveness and kissed him.
The space between fourteen and nineteen was bigger than the space between twenty and twenty-four, she’d insisted. And she’d been right. She usually was.
He kept in touch with Eiji. Their friendship was the one thing he simply refused to let disappear in the flow of time.They talked, emails and video chats, and old-fashioned letters. Eiji seemed settled after his father’s passing. The healing that had begun with the display of Dawn seemed deeper, more... Something. Sing didn’t know the word. Aki said it didn’t matter. What mattered was, Eiji’s smile was real again.
He’d been shocked when Eiji decided to remain in Japan, to marry of all things, shortly after his father’s funeral. He’d hated that faceless woman for a time. She had drawn Eiji’s gaze in a matter of months in a way Sing hadn’t managed in seven long years. How dare she take Eiji away? How dare she claim a love that Sing once wanted desperately but had never been allowed to touch?
Himiko was lovely, Eiji had told him. But the photo Eiji sent showed a plain woman with a square jaw and distant eyes. It didn’t matter that he’d given up wanting that love, that he’d found a different love, sweeter, less painful and more filled with softness and hope. Sing hated her on sight. And she was far from lovely, no matter what Eiji said.
He was damned lucky that Akira understood that his anger was a remnant of a man he no longer wanted to be, even if she insisted she loved that Sing too. She had listened while he spat out his resentment, his betrayal. She had held him while he cried for a future he didn’t think it would hurt to lose, a future he thought he’d lost years before. He had clutched at her, promising she wasn’t his second choice, not a consolation prize or a runner up. He didn’t understand his own feelings. He loved her. He did.
All she said was “I loved him too. More than I should have. Certainly more than he wanted me to. I don’t blame you, Sing. There is so much from back then that you never got the chance to truly grieve.”
But Eiji remained Eiji. Always Eiji.
When Sing was in Hong Kong on business, Eiji flew over to spend the weekend with him.
He came back to New York to celebrate Cain passing the bar. It had been Ash that had first told him he’d make a good lawyer. Eiji had shed a tear when Ash was toasted at the party, but he hugged the giant of a man and gifted him a lovely green silk tie to commemorate the occasion. Cain would become an advocate for kids on the street, the kind a lawyer they hadn’t believed existed when they’d been fighting to survive. Another gift of Ash Lynx’s life and death.
He came when Kong was injured, slotting himself back into the gang as though he had never left. Cooking and straightening and bullying them all into healthier habits for a time. He stayed for over a month, just quietly tending to the men who would always belong to him a little bit too. It wore on him, Sing could tell, to hear the guys call Alex boss, to be in his space, in his world, without him. But it settled him too, Sing thought.
He came when Yut-Lung died. He hadn’t stayed long, too worried about being away from Himiko so close to her due date. But he’d come. And he’d held Sing as he sobbed. They had been free. They should have been free. Stupid fucking assassins. Taking another warrior who had tried to escape the battlefield altogether. Destroying another broken child just as he learned to be a good man.
He had always seemed wistful. A little distant. A little sad. Sing knew he visited Cape Cod every time. He knew it was Eiji that had bought a grave marker. He knew. And Sing had never met this woman who pulled Eiji back to Japan and away from the memories that may have been killing him and the people that loved him.
But now he was here. Back in New York sitting in Sing’s living room. After six long years away, he was home. His wife would teach Japanese pottery at the New School in New York, a friend that was to stay with them also doing something in Academia, something with poetry or writing or something at NYU if Sing remembered correctly. And none of it mattered at all because his best friend was here.
And he looked ok. He was ok. There was no tremor in his hands or waver in his voice as he greeted Sing and Aki, passing along a bottle of sake and a beautiful bouquet of yellow roses.
He wasn’t sure who was more excited, him or Akira. He remembered again that she’d once been a little in love with Eiji too. He hoped this Himiko he was to meet later tonight understood what an amazing human she had married. He couldn’t imagine that she didn’t. Everybody loved Eiji. Even Yut-Lung had cared by the end. In his way.
He collapsed onto the couch, ruffling a bemused Buddy’s ears. After six years with Sing, the poor thing didn’t know what to make of Eiji’s presence. Sing hoped Eiji realized that the statute of limitations on dog-sitting had expired years ago and Buddy was his now. He’d fight him for the dog.
Eiji smiled like he knew exactly what Sing was thinking. He whistled quietly and Buddy padded over, tail wagging to rest his head on Eiji’s thigh. Traitor. But seeing Eiji’s triumphant grin, he couldn’t really be annoyed.
He passed Eiji a beer, popped one open for himself. “Welcome home!”
“Thank you, Sing. It is good to be back. I’ve always,” he paused, that quiet pain still there behind his eyes. “I’ve always known this is where I belonged. I just… I needed time.” He shook his head and sipped his beer. “I am happy to be here now though. It is very exciting! And now I can help you plan your wedding!”
“Good Luck! Aki knows what she wants. Although I guess you have experience with stubborn, huh?” He grinned.
“That I do, Sing. That I do.” Again the shadow in his eyes. But this time, his smile was genuine. He looked-- he looked good.
“So what will you do, here in New York?” Eiji’s last email had told him all about Himiko’s job, but nothing about his own.
“I am a photographer. I am certain there is something in New York worth taking pictures of.” He paused. “And I’m publishing a book.”
“Oh?”
“Yes. My older work. It is…” He looked nervous but... proud, maybe. “It is time… for him to be free.” He pulled out a book wrapped in brown paper. “I brought an advanced copy if you’d like. Although maybe you don’t want to see.”
Sing untied the paper. “Of course I want to see.” A New York Sense . Dawn was the image on the cover. His breath caught. He flipped it open, eyes scanning the dedication.
“This book is dedicated to my friend A, who will be known to me as Dawn.”
Sing scanned through. Ash. Ash sleeping and cooking and smiling and glaring. Ash in every possible mood. Ash looking beautiful and vibrant and oh so alive. And there, toward the end… That picture. The picture Eiji clutched in his fingers the night he decided to die. The picture Sing had taken from him gently the night he decided to try to offer him the comfort of his body if not the awkward weight of his unrequited emotions. He knew what that photo meant. “Eiji, this is, this is stunning. It, it’s a love letter.”
“It is.” Eiji smiled. It reached all the way to his eyes. “Now tell me, who is your wedding photographer?”
“Oh no you don’t. You, sir, will be busy with best man duties.”
An hour, and three beers later, he couldn’t hold back any longer. He’d never asked, never let himself even wonder aloud. He’d been afraid that if he pushed too hard, Eiji would let himself be pushed away. And yet, he needed to know, or maybe he just hoped that somehow he could understand, hoped that even if he couldn’t, that Eiji was happy.
“I can’t believe you’re married. With kids!”
“I know. It surprised me too.”
“When you wrote to say you were going to marry Himiko, I can’t say I wasn’t shocked. I always thought... ” He trailed off, unsure how to go on.
“You were surprised that I married at all or that I married a woman?”
The bluntness caught him off guard. How could he have forgotten? Eiji had never been afraid to say difficult things. “Both, I guess. I guess I thought you--well, I thought wrong, apparently. Two kids and a third on the way.”
“Yeah.” Eiji smiled a small, private smile.
“Are you happy, Eiji, really and truly?”
“I am content, Sing. I have a good life, a good family. I am not lonely. Himiko and I compliment one another well.”
“What about love, passion, romance?”
Eiji’s smile turned pensive, a little sad. His fingers idly stroked the cover of the book that sat on the table between them. “I have had that as well.”
He could leave it alone. He should, maybe. But then he wouldn’t be him. “For two years over a decade ago. Don’t you want that now?”
“I couldn’t have that, now or ever again. That sort of love happens once in a lifetime, if you’re lucky. And I was so incredibly lucky to know it, to experience that kind of, of all-consuming connection. I will never not love Ash, not for a moment. I will never not miss him, his mind, his touch, his intensity. No, I don’t expect to ever feel for anyone the way I felt for him.”
“Then why?”
“Why what? Why get married?” There was a warning in his voice. But there was compassion too. Aki moved behind him, running a supportive hand along his arm as she dropped a plate of snacks on the table.
He reached up to squeeze her hand, before letting her go. “I mean, yeah.”
“Himiko wanted stability, a husband who would be kind, a family. I could offer her those things.”
“Even though you’re still in love with someone else.”
“Yes, Sing. Even then. She has never asked me for that kind of love.”
“So she doesn’t love you either?”
“I didn’t say that. We have a different kind of love. It is softer, gentler. It is good-- to be content. Himiko is a lovely woman. A good companion. An excellent mother. We live well together.”
“What about her? Doesn't she want a grand romance?”
“I have no reason to believe she is unhappy.” Eiji smiled fondly. “As for romance, well. I don’t know how grand--Himiko is very discreet--but I believe she has that too. In a very dear friend who lives down the coast. Yoko, her name is. She will join us here in New York. She is good to Himiko. I like the way she looks at her, like she’s the most amazing person in the room.”
“So wait, your wife has a lover?”
“Yes.”
“And what about you?”
“What about me? I am fine. If I felt I needed something more, I’m certain it could be arranged. But I truly am content, Sing. What I have is enough.”
“So you’re still pining for a dead man.” He tried to keep the anger from his voice.
“My soul is now, and will forever be, with the love of my life. Himiko knows this. Sometimes she may wish it was different. But it isn’t. As I said, we have a different kind of love. Softer, quieter. Safer. It isn’t the same. It never could be. But it is enough.”
“So what, you’re just going to be celebate forever?”
“Sing, in five months, I will have three children. I am hardly celebate.”
“But--”
“Yoko is Himiko’s lover, yes, but I have no cause to feel neglected. Or did you think--”
“I-- are you sure your girls are yours?”
“Of course. I have no doubt of their genetic paternity. But even if they weren’t. I do not love them because they share my genes. I love them because they are my children. Hisui and Kyokko are the most precious things in my life. And every day that they grow up safe and loved and protected I honor his memory a little more.”
“Kyokko means Dawn, right?”
“Yes. And Hisui means Jade.” He smiled. “Yes, I named my daughters for him. And yes, Himiko knows. It was her idea, actually.”
“What about the new baby then?”
“Well this one is a boy. I considered continuing the trend, but…” Eiji blushed.
“But what?”
“But there’s someone else I’d like to honor, if it’s ok. A man who saved my life a hundred times over. A good man that I wish I could have loved in the way he deserved.”
“Who? Look Eiji, I loved Shorter, but please don’t name your kid that.”
“I was thinking more along the lines of Sing.”
Sing stared. In a million years he would never have expected that. He felt his mouth drop open as Eiji laughed.
“You would… your son… but… why?”
“Because the love I have to give you now is enough. Because you are happy, planning a wedding, living a good life. Because it will not hurt you now, I think. And because I want to honor my dear friend, who of all of us found a way to live well. I am proud of you, Sing. Maybe it is not my place to be proud, but I am. I am happy for you. And I would like my son to grow up to be strong and kind and smart like the man he is named for--my dearest friend. I would be honored if my son were to be like you, Sing.” Eiji reached out a hand but let it drop. “If you do not like it…”
“I am honored. I--” The world blurred at tears filled his eyes
“Good. I am glad. I hope you and Aki-chan have a love somewhere in between, Sing.”
“Between?”
“Between an all-consuming flame that burns and flares and consumes you and a quiet, contented companionship. I think real happiness, in the long term, lies between. Maybe we would have found it, Ash and I, if we’d been granted more time. I like to think we would have. That things would have calmed a little when every moment didn’t bear the weight of life and death. In my next life, perhaps I will have the opportunity to ask him.” He smiled, then.
“I...uh… wow. Eiji when did you get to be a philosopher?”
“Somewhere around the second beer. I’m afraid I don’t drink much anymore. I-- I no longer want to be lost.”
“I’m glad, Eiji. I’m glad you found peace.”
“Me too.” He gripped Sing’s arm. “I know Ash would be proud of me.” He gestured at the book. “He’d bitch, and joke and make all sorts of vulgar comments. He is half naked in many of those photos, after all. But later, he’d smile this little smile.” Eiji flipped through the book, stopping at a photo of Ash looking past the camera at the photographer. At Eiji. His face was filled with light, a tiny, gentle smile playing about his lips. He looked like a man in love. “This one here. And he’d say that it was good, the life I have made.”
“I never knew him at all, did I?”
“You did. In part.” Eiji paused. Sipped his beer. “But no. I’m not sure anyone did. Even me. But I knew enough.”
“I--I don’t know what to say, Eiji. I guess… I guess I’m glad you’re ok. I wish you could move on, let him go. But…”
“Do not wish that, Sing. I do not want to move on. I know I am not free. But I would never wish to lose this chain. My soul is tethered. It is as it should be. And if sometimes it is… hard… I wouldn’t trade it. Those two years at his side. I wouldn’t give it up for anything.” His fingers touched the book again. “And I have not done so badly.”
Eiji smiled at him, eyes sparkling with unshed tears. “And you, Sing? Are you finally happy?”
“I am. It was a fight to get here. But I’m fully legit now. All above board. I miss it, some. The guys. Shorter. Yut-Lung. I still see Nadia on occasion, but it isn’t the same.” Sing downed the last of his drink. “I miss you too.”
“Then it is good I will be nearby.” Eiji spoke solemnly, but his eyes sparkled with mischief. Just like old times. It was good to see. “You will miss me less, I promise you, when my girls are constantly in your hair asking to spoil Buddy here. They are both obsessed with animals, and Himiko is allergic.” Eiji laughed then, full throated and happy.
It warmed Sing’s heart. He laughed along. “Damn, Eiji. I guess we grew up. I didn’t really expect to ever manage it.”
“I guess we did.”
They sat in silence for a time, Eiji twisting his beer in his hands idly and Sing tapping his fingers on the table.
“I’d love that,” Sing blurted. “If you, uh, named him for me.”
“Good. I think then that I will.”
Again there was a pause, the air full of something profound.
“I have never known how to thank you, Sing. For holding me together, keeping me alive. I-- My life… I… it is because of you. I know… I know I never managed to give you what you wanted. I thought of pretending once. But… that would have been unfair. And if I couldn’t love you in the way you once hoped, I still loved you. I… Ash respected you. He liked you. I don’t know if you knew. Maybe you don’t care. But…” He sighed. “I’m saying this badly. My wife. My children. This book. It’s all here, I’m here, because you cared for me. And I-- Thank you Sing.”
Akira came in then, settling onto the couch with Sing, and the conversation shifted. They talked of her degree, of Sing’s business. They stayed away from hard topics for the rest of the night, just happy to be together, finally whole.
Himiko called and Eiji convinced her to stop by and meet his friends. She was a tall woman, plain but gentle. She looked at Eiji with fondness and touched him gently as she passed. Akira took to her almost instantly.
The two girls had squealed in excitement and clammored in phrases cobbled together from English, Japanese, and the garbled language of toddlers to be allowed to give Buddy treats and throw his ball, cajoling the old dog to fetch long after the poor thing was tired. They giggled joyously as he licked their faces and hands and tugged at Eiji until he settled on the floor gingerly, favoring his bad leg, to pet the dog and show them how to brush his golden fur. Sing could already tell that Buddy was going to wind up fat and pampered if these two little beasts had anything to say about it. The idea made him smile in quiet joy.
Kyokko, the elder of the two girls, almost four and already quietly thoughtful and filled with smiles like her father told Sing all about how when she was big she would have a dog just like Papa did in his old photos. And she would walk him during intermission from her shows as a ballerina. He didn’t catch all of it. But he didn’t miss the real joy in Eiji’s eyes as she regaled Sing with her life plans.
Hisui was only two, but her eyes snapped with an imperiousness that made Sing wonder if she’d somehow gotten more from Ash than his middle name. She babbled happily at Eiji but climbed into his lap to glare at Sing when she decided he’d clearly paid enough attention to the strange man she was pretty sure she didn’t like. She’d demanded a song and a story and flatly refused her mother’s arms, glowering at the rest of the room until Eiji obliged her with a short story and a quick song that Kyokko joined in on at the chorus.
It made Aki laugh. He was glad to see Himiko smile too.
Eventually Buddy coaxed her back onto the ground to be licked and begged for treats that Himiko had to stop her from eating herself.
Eventually they all settled in together.
Himiko asked intelligent questions about his work and Akira’s future plans, and listened respectfully to the answers. She smiled at Eiji, stepping in with the girls whenever he moved to do it with a quiet “You have missed your friends. It will be your turn tomorrow.”
Now, Eiji’s hand rested comfortably on her belly as she sat next to him, murmuring in quiet Japanese. They made a lovely picture. Himiko with her sharp cheekbones and shy smiles. Eiji with his softness and gentle eyes. The gentle swell of her belly beneath his hand and the two little girls sound asleep with heads pillowed on Buddy’s furry side. Sing pulled out his cell phone and snapped a picture.
Eiji blinked at him, and he shrugged. Himiko smiled. <He is like you.>
<A little.>
Sing watched. He had picked up enough Japanese to follow along.
<He is like him too, yes? Fierce and sweet and a little terrifying?>
<He is. But do not tell him I said so.>
She laughed then. <I make no promises Ei-chan.>
Aki squeezed his leg with a smile.
“A different kind of love, huh?”
“Yes.”
“I’m happy for you.”