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Ash thinks that his autopsy will probably involve several previously unregistered medical anomalies, including the fact that he has no heart.
“Impossible!” the mortician will cry, triple-checking to be sure. “There’s no way!” but it is possible, because it’s true, and where Ash’s heart is supposed to be there is naught but a yawning pit of static, hissing and spitting and cursing his lungs for bringing it nothing but poison. Damn you, it’ll shriek. Damn you and damn the world!
Ash thinks about his death so often it feels like any other lunch topic. Someone (Shorter, because he's the only one he can talk to) might ask “What do you think of the food?” just as easily as he could wonder “Did you try to shoot yourself again? Is that why you were gone?”
And Ash might tell him “It’s fine,” meaning I love it , or he could respond with “No, but he found the razorblade I hid just under the mattress, and I have the scars to prove it.”
The response might be a playful ruffle of his hair or “I know. Your cheek isn’t healed all the way.”
“Fuck off.” or an anxious press of his palm to the side of his face.
“Never.” or maybe the gentle peeling of those pale fingers from yellow-stained skin, and a whisper of “Where else?”
“Dickwad.” or perhaps a flicker of his eyes to the side, downcast, ashamed , and a whisper of “Nowhere else you can see.”
Ash thinks about his death so often he’s sure he must be prophetic, or just really damn unlucky. Shorter prays for his safety so often he’s convinced God must be ignoring him - church fliers stuffed behind the bookshelf that Nadia pretends she doesn’t see.
˚ · • . ° .
Love is everywhere. Love is nowhere. Love is oil-spit stains on all of Nadia’s clothes like blood is stuck to the seams of Shorter’s, impressions of work and home colliding. Love is the stubby plants growing on the side of the highway, the shrubs that line the driveway to Ash’s childhood home, herbs growing in the barely-sunlit window of Chang Dai.
Shorter is convinced Ash is a poet, words flowing more golden than his hair; gifted from on high with rough and tumble hands, palms soft and tongue sharp. He probably tastes like the bloom of an orange, the sticky-sweet juice of a peach.
Nostalgia encases them both in longing, longing for home, for comfort, for a kiss on the forehead and a bedtime story. Cinnamon floats up the stairs, spicy and sweet, and it makes Shorter think about the old women who would tell fortunes, streetside, when he was younger. He was told he’d be a king, then Ash coughs - no winter coat to keep warm, cold seeps into his frail bones and Shorter hides worries of dust or rot in the wood of their house, I might make it worse - and Shorter sees his world bathed in color.
“C’mere, blondie,” he murmurs, pressing the back of his hand to Ash’s forehead, and tsks. “Go to sleep. I’ll get you some food.”
“Fuckhead,” Ash mutters, letting Shorter prop him up on pillows and tuck the blankets around his shoulder with little resistance. “I’m not staying. Dino will - he’ll get mad if I’m - ‘f I’m late.”
“He’ll be angrier if you’re sick,” Shorter tells him, and goes to make some soup.
˚ · • . ° .
Boyhood is synonymous with becoming like girlhood speaks to violence. Blood spills across the pavement, bitter scarlet over speechless gray, and the man does nothing but spit at his feet. “You can’t do shit to me,” he pants. “Papa Dino - he’s always worse.”
“Yeah?” Shorter raises his knife, the metal stained crimson, and gives him a look. “Papa Dino ain’t fuckin here, asshole.”
In the end the man only tells him two things: how much the kid goes for every night, and that he always ends up more hurt with Golzine himself than with any client. Shorter leaves him in the alley, angrier than when he began.
At first he tries to rationalize. Maybe there was someone stopping him from telling me, he muses, scrubbing under his nails until the water turns from pink back to clear. Maybe he was threatened.
A ball bounces off the wall and back into his hand. That could be it. Dino has a ton of scary as shit people working for him. It wouldn’t be hard for one to -
But then again, Ash is smart as hell. Smarter than Shorter and everyone he knows, for sure. He’d probably find some way to tell Shorter, if he could even be intimidated by them in the first place.
Shorter flops onto the couch and considers what he knows. Ash was taken as a child, check. Ash is a ward of Dino Golzine, check. Ash regularly comes to Shorter with at least a limp and fresh bruises, check.
Ash is damn good at keeping secrets, check.
Shorter is maybe (probably) at least a little in love with him, check.
Fuck. Shorter groans and rolls over, deciding to just sleep this off. It’ll be better in the morning. It’ll be better in the morning.
˚ · • . ° .
There are moments when Shorter thinks Ash is probably trying to tell him something; tongue caught between his teeth, expression twisted into something that looks a little like apprehension and a lot like fear. Shorter wants to unspool the truth from him, untwisting confessions from his body until he feels like he can walk with his head up. Until he can meet Shorter’s eyes and not feel the need to apologize for it.
Nadia always says soup is food for the soul, which is good, because Shorter doesn’t really know how to make anything else. Ash stirs it and does little else, and Shorter has just finished his third bowl, so maybe that says more about his character than anything else.
“Do you ever think about like -” Ash blurts, then cuts himself off like he thinks finishing those words will condemn him. Shorter leans back against his bed, listening.
“...About what?” Shorter asks, watching Ash wring his hands. To Ash, they’re like weapons, but Shorter sees them as gifts. That which pulls the trigger is also capable of soothing, of holding, of loving.
Ash swallows. “Running away,” he whispers, tugging at a loose string in his shirt, and Shorter resists the urge to gently pull his hands away.
“Not really,” Shorter rests his head on the worn covers, sewn by his mom and mended by Nadia.The only sharp thing he’s capable of wielding is a knife - more suited to breaking down then building up. Ash would contradict him for saying that, but Shorter knows he feels the same about himself, so maybe they’re both hypocrites.
“Tell me about it anyways.”
“...You sure?” Ash asks.
“Completely.”
“I think I’d go to California,” he says, fidgeting nervously. “I’m not sure if I want to leave the States, but New York, it’s…” he trails off, and Shorter understands implicitly that this is a want that has never been said aloud before. “It’s hard,” he says.
“L.A, or somewhere different?”
“Maybe L.A, yeah, but anywhere West is good enough. It just has to be -”
Far enough, Shorter’s mind supplies. Away from everything. “And would I be able to go with you?”
“No, I’d leave you behind and let you rot uptown - of course you’d go with me, dumbass.” Ash snaps, but the bite isn’t there, so Shorter gets to see a bit of that sweet smile.
“In L.A, I could get a job as a bartender or some shit, and you could -” And then he hesitates, because there’s no way in hell he’s letting Ash go back to what he did before, what he does now. “What do you wanna be?”
“I, um,” Ash tries to make himself smaller, to compress into something likable and small - something easily used. “I’ve never thought about it before.”
“Well, you’re thinking about it now.” Inwardly, Shorter laments not having asked it before, instead having focused too much on bandaging what hurts he could see and just getting him fed and warm. Loneliness has a mouth and it is pressed to his own, spitting acid, cursing him for not being better.
“A writer,” Ash admits.
“So I’ll be a bartender and you’ll be a writer,” he relays. “And we’ll get some tiny two-bedroom, and you can be a dramatic Victorian stereotype, staying up all night and living off coffee until I make you eat something with substance, and I’ll bring home the bacon.”
“On the weekends, we can visit museums,” Ash continues, something like hope or comfort in his eyes - so unused to such an expression, Shorter finds himself unable to identify it. “Or go on walks through the city - I hear there are some good parks, and there’s always the beach.”
“Watch all the kids that were strangers ten minutes ago become best friends, and you’ll get sunburnt so bad you’ll turn lobster.” Shorter laughs. “Pasty ass.”
Ash grumbles, but he’s blushing, so Shorter counts it as a win. Harmony in hearts and hands, their little world keeps turning, and Ash will always be its center.
˚ · • . ° .
Ash tells him the truth - a truth Shorter already knew, stole it from somebody else’s lips - when he thinks Shorter’s asleep, letting Ash keep his back to the wall because he knows it’s another layer of protection, shrouding them both in shadow like it’ll keep the monsters away.
They both know the monsters don’t live in the shadows, that they don’t even bother to hide - they hunt children in broad daylight and eat them for breakfast. But sometimes, childish fantasies feel safer than honesty.
“Golzine found me when I was eight,” he whispers, an arm wrapped around Shorter’s ribs, hand flat over his heart like it might stop beating if he lets go. “He took me off the streets. Raised me to be his heir, taught me languages, politics, rich people shit.”
He shifts, burying his face into Shorter’s back, nose pressed between his shoulder blades. “Taught me other stuff, too.”
Confessions unspooling like wine, like gold wire - the words are never directly said, but he understands all the same. “Sometimes I think it’s all I’m built for,” Ash mutters. “I can hurt people or make them feel good at my own expense, no in between. God,” his voice breaks. “I’m not even - I’m not even human anymore.”
Shorter rolls over, tucking Ash underneath the bow of his arm. He presses close, pulse to pulse. A light flickers through the window, and Ash tenses - oh, how the stars are surely taunting them now, promises of salvation kissing their skin from thousands of miles away yet their feet cannot leave the ground. Love has never felt like fulfillment before, but now Ash understands the appeal of fairy-tale endings. There aren’t many promises he can keep, but now Shorter takes a vow before the eyes of whatever cruel God has condemned them; I will keep you safe.
Thing is, he’d already broken it.
˚ · • . ° .
Bodies are not so much temples as they are hollows for those on high to carve homes from, and little pinpricks of divinity are visible in everything Ash does - one hand caressing the breeze while it flies them by, his thin wrist resting on the glass, golden hair windswept like Shorter’s heart.
Eiji Okumura shifts in his sleep, and the spell is broken.
Perhaps Shorter has never been anyone important to Ash, or perhaps he just wasn’t enough to begin with. He knows one thing for sure; Eiji won’t run, and that fact alone makes him brave in everyone’s eyes. Maybe all he’s ever been has never been more than one single moment, an exhale on a bitter January night. Eiji burns bright, brighter than Shorter could even dream of being, and he’d be lying if he didn’t admit to it tugging at his heartstrings.
It doesn’t matter. They’re going, going, gone, away - towards the west coast. Towards L.A.
Maybe there’s still a chance for that boyhood pipe dream.
˚ · • . ° .
So Ash is in love with Eiji and Eiji is in love with Ash.
Ash can’t lie to him anymore - he’d be flipping pancakes and Ash would spill a secret about how when his world ended, he didn’t even cry. They’d be in the library and Ash would tell him, this is the monster that’s haunted me in my dreams since childhood. Shorter knows that holy places are dark places - it’s why the church was always haunted, why angels scream more than sing. Ash throws Shorter dull fragments of truth and says this is how it is, and Shorter simply sews them into himself, and now they creak in his bones whenever he stands.
Eiji is not a fighter, and Shorter knows that is the biggest difference between them. The skeletons in his closet are ones he put there, but Eiji’s all went voluntarily. He and Ash are back-alley angels, demons in all but name despite Shorter’s best efforts to become clean , but Eiji is something different. He still has a chance, and Shorter intends to preserve it.
Modern martyrs are never afforded the same privileges as those who died before, but Shorter can’t help but think that if it comes down to it, he’d step in front of the bullet without a moment’s hesitation. He pried the wings off his back for Ash to fly, and he’d do it again if he thought it could get him somewhere better.
But - maybe Eiji could help him fly without needing to bleed out. Maybe there was a way to heal the wound without causing more sacrifice.
Okay, he thinks. So what now?
Head resting against the glass, Shorter can see when the sun shoves its way through the thunderheads and graces the world again, setting everything around him alight. It won’t last, he knows it won’t last, but for a brief handful of sugared moments it feels like somebody’s been listening to his prayers. The world is waking up, the whole world is waking up, proving its existence against the cosmic indifference that plagues everything. Fires normally burn upward but the sun pushes its rays out, over the lush expanse of green. Crimson, vermillion, scarlet, ochre, gold, everything is burning. He is one fire, the world is on fire, his eyes are on fire and Ash is haloed with something greater than whatever the angels have got going on.
Oh, he realizes. This must be it.
The sun crests behind a cloud again, or maybe the truck rounds a corner, but it doesn’t matter because the magic dissipates and everyone is damned to mortality once more.
˚ · • . ° .
August burns through the city in a haze of oil-slick mirages and rubber screeches on pavement, so they leave. There is nothing within that cannot be found elsewhere, and now they sit in a field of fruit, hands sticky with strawberries and hesitancy.
“Does this count as running away?” Shorter asks.
Ash pulls a hand through his hair and tells him; “You need to dye it again.”
“Yeah?” Shorter experimentally tugs a lock over his eyes. “What color? I was thinking about purple.”
Ash scoffs. “You’ll look like a punk.”
“This may shock you but by most people’s standards, I am a punk.”
[There are cuffs over his wrists and he cannot move, they will not budge despite his best efforts to get away. He strains, looking for any sense of recognition. The doctor laughs, and his voice cracks when he does, and Shorter thinks about how Ash was when they first met. Small, scared, fighting for his life -
And Ash now, held down in front of him.
So many endings have already passed - a sense of permanence hangs about this room, cold and empty despite the people in it, and Shorter shivers.]
Shorter squints. “Are you sunburnt?”
“I - what?”
He leans in, and Ash leans back. “Your face is all red. Or maybe you’re just overheated…” he murmurs, pressing the back of his hand to Ash’s face, and the blond flushes a deeper shade of pink. “Did you drink water? Nadia will kill me if you get heatstroke.”
Ash swats his hand away, rolling his eyes. “Fuck off. Yes, I drank water, I -”
He stops. Shorter’s staring at him, gaze magnetic.
“Take a picture, dumbass.” Ash drawls, and Shorter laughs.
[“Ash?” Something’s wrong. His eyes are filled with something akin to fear but closer to terror, closer to the thing that chases and chases you all through your dreams.
-There’s a prick in his arm and he flinches, surprised -
And then he screams, white fire ripping through his bloodstream and uncovering a violence so deeply hidden he wasn’t even aware it existed, hunting, hunting, hunting him until there’s a knife in his hand and-]
“Why, cuz it’ll last longer?” he grins. “How ‘bout I just keep you close to me, instead?”
Ash groans, flopping back on the grass. “It’s a miracle you ever manage to pick up girls with lines like that.”
“Oh believe me, I know. One time this chick said-”
Ash sits up and presses a strawberry-stained finger to Shorter’s lips. “Don’t you dare finish that sentence,” he warns. “I’d rather die than have to hear the end.”
Shorter can feel the tips of his ears turning red, and Ash smirks. “What, you sunburnt?” he asks. “Nadia will kill you if you get heatstroke.”
Shorter doesn’t think, just pulls Ash down with him and they both go rolling down the hill, limbs tangled with limbs and hearts held in the others’ hands or maybe somewhere safer, away from prying eyes. Shorter’s mind is a jewelry box and every precious gem, every piece of silver and gold is a memory of Ash.
[Oh god, oh heaven or hell, I’m sorry. I’m sorry, I-
Once there was a blood bond that connected them like a summer-sweet string, a ribbon of trust from heart to heart. Shorter tastes strawberries and he sees an angel weeping over him, and perhaps for the very last time, he feels it; that desolate knowledge that what they had, just isn’t coming back.
“Set me free,” he prays, and the angel does just that.]
Sorter must be dreaming. Ash is splayed in the stubby grass both next to him and slightly on top of him, head smushing Shorter’s ribs. (Look at me, he wants to say. I was weightless and you brought me back. Look at me.)
“You gonna move”
“Nope,” Ash says, voice muffled. “You make a good pillow.”
“Alright, blondie,” Shorter gently pushes a lock of golden hair from Ash’s eyes. This kind of freedom is like a sunset; brilliant and bold and vanishing before you know it. You always miss it more once it’s gone. Perhaps the scars have yet to heal. Perhaps they will never have enough time.
Perhaps, something good has been built.
“Ash?”
“Mmph.”
“You know you’re my best friend, right?”
Ash raises his head just barely, and Shorter feels pinned by jade green. “Course I do, dumbass.” he says, and god, he had yet to be human before this moment. Gold is not gold without the sun, without someone to watch it burnish a brilliant yellow but Ash is always Ash and Shorter is seen, he is seen, he is alive.