Chapter Text
Reddoons, before he fully remembers that he is Reddoons, is given another name and another identity; youngest child to a family of four, living in a quiet, boring neighborhood and notoriously known within his family for his materialistic tendencies.
“You came out of the womb digging your fingers into whatever scheme you could,” His mother would say, fondly exasperated in the way only a parent who had to deal with her children’s antics twenty-four-seven could be. Red, who was four and a half and quietly gathering that the second set of memories in his head isn’t all that normal , only smiles.
Reddoons, when he fully remembers that he is Reddoons, has already gotten his family to call him Red and finally learned enough to put into words the odd feeling in his chest – the distinct sensation of being out of place, out of time, alone even when surrounded by a group of people.
He is in the bathroom, one early morning where everyone is still safely tucked into their beds when all the puzzle pieces slowly click into place - his name, his aversion to maintaining direct eye contact, the ache in his bones for a different life. Red peers up at the mirror – only seven years of age, just tall enough to reach the sink properly – and pulls at his own face, twisting the skin this way and that.
His hair is still red, a bright flaming red that clashes horribly with the duller maroons of his pajamas. The skin he pulls at is pale, but his eyes are light brown now, with specks of gray in place of the blue-gray irises they used to be.
Your eyes are pretty, Ash had mumbled once in a moment of soft quiet, fingertips just barely brushing his cheek. Red pretends his heart doesn’t twist at the memory.
In the early light of the morning, Red slips out the door, fully dressed. When he comes back the house will only just be waking up, and the only thing to note will be the pair of shades slipped over his face.
***
It takes around another seven years for him to find someone else.
A complete coincidence in the end, a could-have-been that did happen, a thousand different little choices that leads up to this: an arcade. Red, bored out of his mind and with enough money saved up to spend a few hours messing around with arcade games. It’s raining outside, the few brave souls willing to go out in the downpour retreating into shops and residences as the weather gets worse.
The lights in the arcade are bright, colorful neon leds illuminating the consoles. Red flicks his thumb and irritably scoffs when the spaceship on-screen explodes into tiny pixels, GAME OVER blaring out over the speakers in tinny quality.
“Well that’s not very cash money. You’ve gotta stay out of range when you reach the higher levels,” A quiet, almost amused voice pipes up from behind him. Red turns around, the glare on his face faltering as he takes in the other’s face. “The enemies have greater durability but you’ve got more space to maneuver.”
The stranger is shorter than Red, dark hair spilling past his shoulders and streaked through with color. He’s wearing a faded, patchwork jacket of jarring colors and carries himself with a kind of confidence that makes Red straighten up and watch – look closely.
But in the end, really, it’s his eyes that does it – a deep brown, with purple specks thrown into sharp relief under the neon lights.
“Ash,” Red breathes out, barely audible amidst the noise of the arcade machines. Dark eyes widened.
“Red?” The word hovers in the air for just a moment before they’re crashing into each other, Red’s arm winding around Ash’s waist and another curling up at the base of his neck, Ash wrapping both arms around Red’s back and holding on with a fierce stubbornness.
Red’s not sure which one of them is shaking, clinging to each other with desperation as they are; it could’ve been either Ash or himself and he wouldn’t be able to tell. He pulls back reluctantly – okay, so the shaking was just Red, Ash looking a little wild around the eyes but still keeping his shit together – and pulls at Ash’s arm. “C’mon,” he says, guiding them towards the stairwell, hidden around a corner. “We should- should probably move somewhere else.”
The stairwell is darker than the rest of the arcade room but it’s quieter, music and laughter muffled slightly. They stagger to a stop at the bottom of the staircase, still entwined around each other when they settle down on the steps. He’s still shaking, Red thinks. It’s difficult to tell, when everything clattering around in his brain is just you’re here you’re here and thank the stars I didn’t lose you forever.
Ash curls over him in the same way they used to do during sleepless nights – it’s more difficult now, with Red being taller and their limbs getting in the way of each other in the cramped space, but they make do. Red digs his fingernails into Ash’s jacket and breathes, akin to a man coming up for oxygen after too many years of struggling to take in air. His shades are bumping against his face uncomfortably. He doesn’t bother to move his arms to adjust them. Ash buries his face into Red’s hair and laughs, a half-strangled noise that Red echoes.
“You’re here,” Ash says out loud, almost like he can’t believe himself. Red could sympathize. He was still half certain he’d wake up and find himself alone again, with nothing but strange memories and an overwhelming sense of not being able to fit into place. “How did you-” Ash cuts himself off, skips through three different variations of a start of a sentence before giving up altogether.
“I’m here,” Red mutters into the warmth of the hold. “We can talk later, okay? Let’s just– stay like this for a minute.”
“Okay.” There’s a dull pressure on Red’s head. “Okay.”
For them, for just a moment of time, that stairwell may as well have been a sanctuary.