Chapter Text
It’s too cold in Max’s guest room. And it stays cold. No matter how high he cranks up the heating, it always stays cold. He’s shivering in his bed at night, huddled up beneath his blankets, miles away from sleep, his brain on fire as his body is encased in ice. An extra sweater doesn’t help during the day; there’s a limit to how many pairs of socks he can wear. He’s always cold. He doesn’t remember New York being this cold. But then the New York he remembers had him in it, and they say his warmth is gone now too. That his body was cold to the touch. Empty. Lifeless. Just a shell left behind when everything that was him disappeared as though it was never there at all. Every thought in that brilliant mind, every feeling, all that pain, every word he said and every smile he sent out into a world that didn’t deserve it, the glint in those eyes that had seen too much but still carried kindness, the touch of his hand against his head as he checked his temperature, the lilt in his voice, teasing him about being too slow a reader…all gone. Not a trace left, nothing to reassure himself that it wasn’t just his imagination, no way to pluck it from his memories and preserve it for the world to see, for him to crawl into, to turn to, to talk to. It’s gone. It’s all gone. He’s gone.
He can’t be gone.
Would it be easier to accept if he had seen him? If he’d made it back in time for the funeral, if it hadn’t taken him so long to reason, yell, beg his parents to pay for his flight? He’d used almost all of the money he had left to pay for another one. A ticket that was never used. A letter that might never have been read.
Max regrets it now, he can tell. That he pushed the funeral along at such a fast pace, that he kept telling Eiji to stay where he was. “There’s nothing you can do for him here anymore, and it’s not safe for you to travel this long again with your wounds still not healed. He wouldn’t want that for you. You know that too. He wouldn’t want you dragged back here just to cry at his grave. You’re finally safe. It’s best if you just stay there. It won’t hurt less no matter where you are.”
He should be regretting it. He should never stop regretting it. He should have known better. Of course Eiji came back. The moment he could, he came back. Too late for the funeral, too late to see him, to see that body they claim was his and finally be able to believe it the way they do. But maybe he’s just fooling himself. Maybe it wouldn’t have changed anything. How could it? There’s no believing something that can’t be true. That can’t be true simply because if it were, the world would have stopped. Everything would have come to a halt. There can be no world without him in it. It simply cannot be. How can such a thing be and how can he be expected to live with it?
A death. Such a small thing. Such a normal thing. Something that happens every day, hundreds of thousands of times. Hundreds of thousands of people left behind like him. Do they all feel this way? And if they do, how has all that suffering not caused the whole planet to explode yet? How do things just keep going; where does all that pain go? There’s not enough room inside a body, that much he knows. He keeps shrinking around it the more it grows, and grow it does, all the time. Every day, every second there’s more of it and less of him. He can’t even say what’s worse, if no one ever felt like this or if all of them do. If in every subway car, every store he ever went to there was at least one person who was sinking like he is and he just couldn’t tell, just walked past them smiling an oblivious smile as they were being devoured from the inside. Just like no one can tell when they look at him now. They can’t see he’s not a person anymore. Only the ruins left in the absence of another one.
One person. Nothing in the grand scheme of things. Everything to him. And he would trade everything, everyone to get him back. To get just one more minute with him. To see and hear and feel all those things that are lost forever, that the nightmares that wake him in a panicked shiver keep whispering he will forget one day. The exact shade of his eyes, the myriad of details that made his hands different from everyone else’s… It’s impossible to go back to sleep when he needs to make sure he still remembers, to conjure up every single moment, look at it from every angle, stare at it until it starts to blur. It’s all still there. But for how long? Are there recordings of his voice somewhere? Maybe. But even if there are, they’d be as stiff and lifeless, as frozen in time as he is. Because that voice will never say anything new. It will never say his name again. It can only ever be mechanic and cold, and that’s all Eiji can be and feel now too. The heating won’t go up any higher. Nothing helps.
He should get out of this room more; a part of him knows that. But where would he go? What’s the point of going anywhere and doing anything ever again when the side he wanted to stay by forever no longer exists, when the one thing he tried to do, that he needed to do, failed so horribly, so completely? There’s nothing left for him here; Max wasn’t wrong about that. But he was wrong in claiming it wouldn’t make a difference where he was. He’s closer to him here. Ash never made it to Japan, into that life Eiji promised him and now he can’t go back either. There’s even less left for him there. So he’ll stay here. Forever. It’s not the promise he once made but it’s as close as he’ll ever get in trying to keep it now. Max doesn’t know yet. His parents don’t either. It doesn’t matter. What they think is irrelevant. This was Ash’s home, and Ash was his home. He won’t leave. He can’t leave. He can’t leave him again.
Max has been leaving him alone, for the most part. He brings him food and complains when Eiji doesn’t eat it; he reminds him to shower occasionally – judging by the face he makes when he does so, there’s probably more of a stench-based trigger than a strict schedule – but other than that, he keeps his distance, tiptoes around him all soft steps and pitying looks. He’s hurting too; the ever-shrinking part of Eiji’s mind that still has some loose contact with the world around him knows that. It knows he’s being selfish, acting like he’s the only one who’s lost him, the only one with a right to grieve all the while Max is letting him stay in his guest room, paying for his food, keeping his clothes clean. It changes nothing, though. He can’t bring himself to care, not a lot, not a little, not at all. There’s no room for anyone else’s pain. Everything is filled with his own. It’s Max who eventually reaches out. Who knocks but doesn’t wait to enter, wrinkles his nose, takes a circle around the room to open the window and sits down on the edge of the bed Eiji has been lying on motionlessly for… he doesn’t remember. Since breakfast, probably. Did he even have breakfast today?
“Do you want to talk?” Max’s voice is soft. Much softer than usual.
Eiji shakes his head.
“Well,” Max sighs, “that’s too bad because I do. And you should.”
Oh, should he now? What he should be is with Ash. Ash should be alive. And Max should shut the fuck up. Nothing is as it should be, nothing ever will be again.
“There’s nothing to say.”
“Isn’t it more like there’s too much to say?”
“What’s the difference?” He turns to face the wall. “It won’t help either way.”
The silence that settles between them is sticky and uncomfortable. He shouldn’t find it this satisfying.
“Tell you what,” Max says at last, “I’ll cut you a deal. I’ll draw you a bath and while you take it, I’ll change your sheets because things are getting ripe in here. Then I’ll leave you alone and we’ll try again tomorrow. Deal?”
You can try as many times as you like; it still won’t bring him back.
“Fine.”
He’s lost count of how many times Max has “tried again tomorrow”. It might have been months. It’s definitely weeks. Every day again, he waltzes into his room like he owns the place (and the fact that he technically does own the place does nothing to help with the frustration), sits on the edge of his bed with that blank, gentle look that makes Eiji want to punch him and asks if he wants to talk. At first, Eiji says no. Eventually, he stops saying anything at all. An answer that matches the question.
Max never pushes, never asks twice; day after day, he merely announces his intent to return tomorrow and leaves. Not without a deal, though. There’s always some sort of deal involved. For Eiji to eat something. For him to not only eat something but do so in the kitchen. To shower, to take out his trash or change his clothes. Once or twice per week, the bargain is harder: an hour outside, he can keep silent if he likes but they’re not returning to the house until that hour is over. Eiji refuses, at first. But when he does, Max won’t leave, and it’s easier to just get that hour of silence over with than to deal with an additional three hours of Max being silent and present in his room instead. And if Max thought walking would make him want to talk, he thought wrong. All it does is add some rhythm to the constant refrain of screams in his head.
Why didn’t you keep an eye on him?
You could find out where we were after prison but you couldn’t locate him THEN?
Didn’t you have something to THANK him for?
Why didn’t you come to the hospital and take me to him?
Why are you still here when he isn’t?
He has just as little desire to let any of it out of his head and into the world here as he does in his room. Because what’s the use? It’s too late. Everything is too late and Max doesn’t have any answers. He never did. None of them do; they’re all just pretending and that’s all they ever did.
But still, Max keeps coming. Every day.
There’s nothing different about the day that ends Max’s threat of “tomorrow”. Eiji doesn’t want to talk any more than he did on any of the others, so he doesn’t. He follows Max to the kitchen because that’s today’s deal; he helps prepare the food because it’s easier than to argue that a sequence of several different, time-consuming actions shouldn’t be lumped together as one ‘deal’. The fog he’s moving through isn’t any less dense; the one in his mind isn’t either. The tears never came in front of Max before but today, for some reason, they do. Maybe it’s the shrimp. Maybe it's the avocado. Maybe Max knew. Maybe he really is that cruel.
There’s nothing cruel about the way he hands him a tissue, though. Nothing judgmental in the voice that tells him, “It’s ok. Let it out. That’s the best thing you can do, let it out”, or that sound that’s as much a huff as a laugh. “I had to learn that the hard way too. You’re already doing a better job at it than I did.”
Eiji still doesn’t want to talk; it’s more like the tears are flooding out the words. And when they finally wash ashore, they are quite different from the ones he’s heard crashing against the inside of his skull day in, day out.
“It’s my fault. It’s all my fault. Everything I did to save him, it ended up being the thing that— If I’d let Charlie capture him, if I hadn’t told him to run away, he’d have been in prison, he wouldn’t have… he wouldn’t have… Everything I did was wrong. Even just stealing that car, if I hadn’t helped him back then he might have—“
“He might have died a lot sooner.” He can’t see through his tears, startles at the hand settling on his shoulder. “Maybe even that very day. He might also never have had you then. You two might never have gotten to know each other the way you did, or even just seen each other again. And I know, and deep down you do too that if he’d had to choose between the two, where that choice would have fallen. You meant everything to him. And being with you, trying to get back to you, saved him on more than one occasion.” The hand on his shoulder squeezes down hard. “I know that in my bones. If he hadn’t had you, he would not have pulled through after Arthur got him. He was ready to say goodbye to life then. He just wasn’t ready to say goodbye to you.”
“So I killed him the moment I left the country, is that it?” He didn’t mean to slap the hand away. He didn’t mean to yell either. “When… when I… All those times I didn’t leave he didn’t die even when they said he did, even when everyone said he should have, but the moment I did leave he…”
There’s a shadow on Max’s face. Just a tiny little flicker, but it’s enough to prove that he’s right, that Max thinks it too even if he’s too kind to say it, and Eiji breaks. Whatever part of him wasn’t yet shattered shatters, until there’s nothing left but a hole in his chest through which he breathes shards of what he once was, millions of jagged edges piercing his lungs, his throat, perforating his soul, the one thing he vowed would be with Ash forever, shredding it to pieces, tearing it away. “He didn’t survive LAO! Lao of all people! Because I LEFT, I left him all alone, it’s all my fault, why did I leave, I promise myself I never would, why did I leave him, why—“
Max’s arms are around him, a little stiff but gentle. It takes Eiji a moment to realise that the slight tremble in his body means he’s crying too. “It’s not your fault, Eiji. You were shot, you almost died, of course you had to go home for a while. Actually, you should still be just there, resting, getting better. He understood that too.”
“I didn’t even go see him! I probably made him think… I only wrote him a stupid letter and I didn’t even make sure he’d read it. I should have begged him to come with me in person or— or make him understand that I’d come back if he didn’t, that I’d always come back. I should have gone, why didn’t I go, I promised forever, I failed him, I— He—he meant so much to me, he meant everything to me, he—”
“This isn’t on you, Eiji, it’s on me. I let him just run on his own for way too long. It was too easy to forget how young he was after he’d had to fend for himself for so long. I should have put my foot down. He had to be our leader, the one who carried everything on his back, and I let him. I knew he was a child, hiding and crying somewhere in there and I just looked away from that.” Now, he can’t just feel Max crying. He can hear it. “He was eighteen. He was younger than Griff when—” He breaks off, wipes at his eyes. “You didn’t fail him. I can promise you, you were the only thing keeping him alive. Even just that letter, for fuck’s sake, he was using those pages as a pillow when he died! You did more to lighten his burden than anyone else, a hell of a lot more than I ever did. He was like a son to me and I was just another useless dad even though I knew how much he would have needed a proper one. I…”
But Eiji’s no longer listening. Whatever else Max says, it’s all being drowned out by just three words repeating over and over and over in his head, a little louder each time, a little more inescapable.
As a pillow.
He opened the letter. And if he opened it, he read it. And if he read it, that can only mean one thing:
It was his fault. It was truly, absolutely, beyond a doubt entirely his fault.