Chapter Text
Entry #4 Deathless Gold
The colour of treasure.
The colour of luck, the colour of sickly greed.
The colour of high dawn, honeycombs refracting sunshine, hopscotch on a predator’s skin.
The color of harp laments, the colour of reluctant armour.
The colour of preciousness.
---
There was a certain halo to Eiji in the dark.
Not a visible one, not cartoony and heavenly like an angel in a picture book, but something far simpler; something far more primeval.
Something small and majestic, like the first push of a seedling’s stem above ground. The way he was curled up next to Ash, knees drawn in and arms wrapped around himself. Would he wrap them around Ash, if Ash was brave enough to turn his face towards Eiji’s?
Something quiet and secret, like the ocean’s tides on a new moon night. The way he spoke low and breathy and almost maddening as he gave shape to careful thoughts. Would Ash lose his mind and thaw if Eiji called him by his given name now, his lips only a few inches from the shell of Ash’s ear?
Something yielding and overflowing, like a just-born wellspring cascading over stubborn rock. The way his eyes lit up the room more than the sliver of moon in the sky, the curve of his smile never seeming to tire of setting Ash’s face on fire. Would that smile persist under one kiss, two kisses, all the hundred thousand kisses that Ash saw only in his dreams?
“Hey.” Eiji’s finger tapped on Ash’s cheek, and Ash’s half-lidded eyes flew fully open. “You’re not getting sleepy, are you?”
Ash would’ve laughed if there’d been enough breath in his lungs for that. There never seemed to be when he was around Eiji these days. Never enough air between them; entirely too much space, even when they were laying side-by-side like this.
“No.”
‘As if I could waste a nanosecond being unconscious when I have you next to me’ Ash wanted to add.
“Unlike some people, I don’t conk off at 10 PM,” he said instead.
The back of Eiji’s hand smacked against his own, and Ash resisted the urge to twine their fingers. “Fuck you. It’s 2.30 AM and I’m awake, aren’t I?”
Was it 2.30 already? Where had the last hour and half gone? It hadn’t felt longer than minutes to Ash.
“We have to be up for school in two hours,” he realized, something heavy in his bones and fizzing in his chest.
Eiji hummed, stretching just enough to make his back crack. “You think you’ll be able to make it through the whole day without nodding off?”
Ash snorted. “Shouldn’t you be the one worrying about that? You’re the one who has to scale the hell-mountain.”
Eiji grinned at him. Cheeky, candy-sour, handsome.
“Bold of you to assume that they don’t train us to survive without sleep.”
Ash scowled. “Smart-ass.”
“Know-it-all,” Eiji shot back, his voice like a bite you’d actually want.
“Hey, you’re the one who asked for the fucking seminar!”
“I did. So, stop stalling and tell me about another one.”
Ash huffed, his gaze flitting to the sky once more. They were lying on the floor of Eiji’s bedroom, shunted off somewhere to the far left of his bed. Above them was a—well, Eiji had called it a skylight—but what it really was, was a sizeable hole in the ceiling. Eiji didn’t quite know what had made it; he guessed it was falling debris because the hole was also in all the ceilings above his own, such that you could see a chunk of the night sky through it. Either way it had come with the apartment, so Eiji had simply tacked up a canvas tarp to cover it. Most nights the tarp kept the elements out, but on nights like this one that boasted a freak breeze and a clear sky, Eiji would open it up, to let the cold air and starlight into the windowless room.
But that wasn’t all. He would also text Ash: ‘The sky’s clear tonight if you’re not too tired.’
He’d gone from ‘Do you think your parents would mind if you came over for a bit?’ to ‘Would you like to join me? For stargazing?’ to ‘Can you sneak out?’ to omitting any overt semblance of a question altogether.
Almost as if he could read Ash’s mind; as if he could hear the ‘Of course I’ll come; it eats at me to stay away from you anyway’ in Ash’s neutral reply:
‘Sure, if you want me to.’
God, Ash was such a jackass. Turning it around on Eiji as if he wanted to any less than Eiji did. Stupid armour that made him squirrelly and cold. Annoying fucking defence mechanisms that shielded his raw bleeding heart from everything, even good things.
Oh, but Eiji.
Eiji didn’t mind him; didn’t mind his pouting and his clipped remarks; didn’t mind that he was always later than he said he would be because both Max and Michael had the ears of a fox, and it’d take an eternity to tiptoe past them and out the front door once the midnight mark had been crossed.
Eiji’s door would always open to him; he would always welcome Ash into his home; into his bedroom with a smile on his face. Brimming and eager in the unlit house, moon rays soaking through shadows they would cut through like ink. And for all the darkness in space, for all the greyscale years Ash had been alive, he would be hard-pressed to liken the stunning colour of Eiji’s hair, of Eiji’s eyes to anything he’d ever seen.
He thought he could before, but after spending so much time with Eiji, it occurred to Ash that the void of the universe didn’t dance with light quite the same; that smoke was too dull; that the night held too much blue, that pitch wasn’t extraordinary enough.
No, Ash was convinced there wasn’t anything in the cosmos like Eiji’s hair. Like his eyes. Like his smile.
Like him.
Only one Eiji in this version of reality, and of all the places he could be, of all the people he could be lying next to, he was lying next to Ash. Gaze glittering like an enchanted lake, he was asking softly for Ash’s knowledge of the expanse of space that lay beyond this planet that he would never leave.
Point one to fate, Ash supposed.
“Let’s see…what other space colonies can we see…,” he mused examining the sky for a moment, before exclaiming, “Oh, you’ll like this one; we can see Eden from here.”
“Eden?” Eiji repeated, his expression a little lost. “Where is that?”
Ash almost lifted his own hand to point, but the split-second brush of Eiji’s fingers against his own gave him an idea. Gathering his courage, he wrapped his hand around Eiji’s wrist instead. Eiji’s breath hitched, and Ash felt a look—a look like silk on trembling skin—focused on his face.
Warming now from the inside out, he unfolded Eiji’s pointer finger from his lax palm and guided it towards a bright unblinking speck that seemed to wade through the bruise-tinted sky. “There. That’s Eden.”
Next to him, Eiji’s breathing evened out, and Ash noted with syrupy delight that he was making no move to withdraw his hand from Ash’s as it dropped down between them, their fingers knitted together loosely. “Eden,” Eiji said again. “What is it like?”
“I’ve never lived there myself,” Ash admitted, “But from what I’ve heard they’re the most agriculturally advanced. They produce a huge portion of the food crops for the space colonies.”
“Hmm,” Eiji pondered. “You’d think the space colony leadership would be smarter than creating the opportunity for such an important monopoly.”
“You would, wouldn’t you?” Ash snickered. “But for whatever reason the earliest leaders were a little too sure of their ability to control Eden, and as most over-confident nonsense does, it blew up in their faces. Now it’s one of the most autonomous members of the greater alliance. Their housing and transport systems aren’t as sophisticated, and the healthcare facilities as aren’t as well-developed in comparison, but the people live more peaceful lives. No civil unrest in the last fifty years. Which, I mean, don’t get me wrong; it’s still a corrupt democracy, but—”
“At least it is one,” Eiji finished astutely. Ash stole a glance at him. There was an uncharacteristic mist in his eyes, resigned, relieved. “I... I’m glad,” Eiji murmured. He was serene like the vaguest of sorrows, and Ash ran a thumb over top of his hand, over and over and over again, the motion the only outlet for the worry in his heart.
It took a few moments for Eiji to register the touch, and that was confusing for Ash in itself, but any interrogative kernels in his brain exploded into smithereens when Eiji’s thumb overlapped his own, assuaging Ash with its surety.
“I’m glad that Eden is a somewhat decent place to live,” Eiji clarified, and there was that beloved smile again. “There’s so few decent places now. And they’ll only get fewer from here.”
And Wolfsbane was not one of them, Ash decided then. It couldn’t be, because Wolfsbane had Eiji, and any place Eiji was, could never be called something as unflattering as ‘decent.’
No, the only word Ash could think of, was ‘paradise.’
Not ironic, pompous space-colony paradise, which bore that heavy title like a clumsy, gaudy, outright stolen crown. But real paradise, with comfort and warmth and sincerity and bottomless fuzzy feelings.
“You got that right,” Ash responded belatedly, when the tip of one of Eiji’s nails scraped promptingly against his own. “I’ve lived nowhere decent.” Until now.
“And you’ve lived in Elysium,” Eiji sighed, clearly familiar with the reputation of the space colony that bragged about having the highest standard of living in this corner of the universe. “Too many oligarchs for you there, yes?”
Ash laughed, caustic and muted, clamping his eyes shut as if it would make the memory of that time go away. “You have no idea.”
“No,” Eiji conceded, exhaling audible and content as he turned his face to catch Ash’s eyes. They looked at each other, and Ash speculated wildly about the way Eiji would look with his bangs pushed back, subtle dips where Ash’s fingers would have combed through his hair.
“Truly, I have no idea,” Eiji said, a little helpless, a little fond. “About any of this. When I chose Vitae, I sort of dropped out of the loop on these things, that had nothing to do with Earth. For a long time, I thought I didn’t care that I didn’t know about them, but then you…”
Eiji paused, and Ash wondered if he was searching for the right words.
“Then me what?”
“Then you,” Eiji asserted, as if that was justification enough. As if Ash was enough. “I like learning from you. You’re like…like…”
Ash held his breath, risking inching a centimetre closer to Eiji, and then, then of all things Eiji could’ve said, he said, “You’re like an awesome textbook.”
The cresting wave within Ash splattered against his ribcage and hardened to seashells. “Gee thanks, glad to carry forward Max’s legacy,” he grumbled, put out.
Eiji poked him insistently in his side. “Let me finish, you misinterpreting twit,” he scolded. Ash glared at him, daring him, begging him.
“You’re like a textbook,” Eiji began again. “Only better, cooler. You know about the stuff that actually matters, you’re funny, you have opinions, nuance, and—”
Eiji’s voice caught in his throat, and his gaze dropped to Ash’s shoulder, as if suddenly overwhelmed with what he was wanting to say.
Serious, strawberry-sweet, cute.
“Well?” Ash teased, shuffling down a little to find his eyes. “Don’t stop now.”
There was enough challenge in Ash’s voice to galvanize Eiji, and he peeked up at Ash audaciously. “And you have a lovely voice.”
Holy mother of all that was good and pure.
Eiji was close enough now for Ash to conceivably hear his breathing, but he couldn’t hear anything past the fireworks in his skull, past the pounding in his chest that reverberated down to his fingers, past the unabashed wispy declaration playing in his mind like a broken record.
God, Ash was going to hear those words forever.
He shook his head, entirely bulldozed as his gaze held Eiji’s steadily. “I can’t believe you called me a twit,” he said, the ire flimsy even to his own ears. “And a know-it-all.”
Eiji rolled his eyes. “Are you still on that?”
“Am I still—” Ash turned completely on his side now, propping up his head with an elbow. “I don’t think I’ll forget it for the rest of my natural life!”
“Insufferable,” Eiji admonished as he mirrored Ash, flicking his forehead. “Insufferable Ash.”
“Aslan.”
Eiji startled, and Ash startled along with him. Did he really just…?
“What was that?” Eiji ventured after neither of them had spoken for a few seconds.
Ash flushed.
“That—it—it’s my given name, my…actual name,” he stammered. “You can…you can call me Aslan. If you want. Just you, though.”
And Eiji, oh, Eiji regarded him with a new smile, a new tenderness, soft and patient and dubious, in a way that asked, ‘Really? If I want?’
Ash flushed even more, the near-non-existent light of their surroundings his only saving grace. It was silent for a few heartbeats, and then Eiji was giggling, in that restrained effervescent way of his, and pushing Ash back down on his back.
Ash went easily, his heart already in a frenzy, but when Eiji leaned close to him, it straight up leapt off the rails.
“Aslan,” he whispered in Ash’s ears, and God, Ash almost wept— “You’re a twit, and a know-it-all, and you have a fucking gorgeous voice.”
Smug fucking bastard.
Ash laughed. Unbridled, giddy, aching.
“Fuck you, Eiji.”
---
Eiji did not stare at his phone for no reason.
Truth be told, unless the thing was going off, Eiji would barely acknowledge its presence in his life, as if subconsciously adapting for a circumstance where he wouldn’t have it.
So, when Ash looked up from his homework one afternoon to find him frowning at it, he knew something was wrong.
“What happened?”
“That was Ibe-san,” Eiji said, locking his phone and tossing it aside. He buried his face in his hands, palms pushed over his closed eyes, as if he was trying to banish whatever was bothering him from the one place that would make it obvious. Ash waited for him to take a deep breath, to say more, but Eiji seemed to have forgotten he was mid-explanation.
Ash sat up then, shifting over to Eiji to put a hand on his knee. He didn’t know if his fingers tracing circles into the fabric of Eiji’s pants would be taken as support or expectation or what, but Ash hoped that it came across as intention.
As a deliberate reminder that he was there. That Eiji didn’t need to keep this to himself if he didn’t want to.
And sure enough Eiji chuckled, mirthless and clacking in a way that made Ash squeeze his knee anxiously. He lifted his face to Ash’s own, and Ash could swear he’d never looked so tired. “If I asked you to go to the Woodlands with me, would you say no?” he asked.
“No,” Ash said reflexively, before second-guessing the double negative. “I—I mean yes. Is that—no wait. No, I won’t say no. Yes, I’ll go with you. If you want me.”
Eiji rested his face in his palm. Lips pursed and smile half-hidden, gazing at Ash as if he meant more than the oxygen in the air, and that was when Ash registered just what he’d said.
“There. If you want me there,” he amended hurriedly, with half a mind to chew his treacherous tongue in two.
Eiji laughed away the budding glower on Ash’s face, mischievous like sunrays peeking through foliage and twice as captivating. “I do want you. There.”
He clasped Ash’s hand and pulled them both to their feet. “It won’t feel as bad with you there. Nothing feels very hopeless when you’re around.”
God, Ash really needed Eiji to shut the fuck up. His bones were going to turn into sugar and his brain into cotton candy if Eiji didn’t shut his pretty mouth. But he also needed Eiji to tell him what was going on.
“Why’re we going to the Woodlands anyway? Aren’t there like…rabid jungle cats there?”
Eiji sighed ruefully. “Not enough to be a threat anymore. We just lost our last leopard. Ibe-san’s been commissioned to…to document the extinction.”
And really, Ash thought he’d be less appalled. He thought nothing the space colony leadership demanded of the people they presided over could faze him now. But as he picked gingerly through the thistles on the eastern outskirts of the Woodlands, Ash found himself becoming more and more aggravated.
With every step the air grew cloyingly putrid, the stench of death preceding the murmurs of human voices that overpowered the rustling song of the farmlands in the distance. There was no path, not really, but Eiji stamped down some of the bigger ferns to make it easier for Ash as he walked on ahead of him, looking over his shoulder every few minutes to check if Ash was okay.
“Yeesh, just how many people are there up ahead?” Ash grumbled, as Eiji leaned forward to steer him away from a particularly thorny plant near his ankles, attempting to balance his thick colour-swatch files in one hand.
“Hard to say,” Eiji panted, even as Ash put out his own hands to steady him. He took up two of the files to lighten Eiji’s load. “Nobody really comes to the extinctions of mice and voles and such. But a leopard…”
Ash stopped walking. “You’ve done this before?”
“This is my eighth extinction,” Eiji responded. His face shone like a pearl, lonesome and brittle, yet when he smiled it almost seemed easy, fluid. “And it will not be my last, so don’t look at me like that.”
Ash trudged forward, only a little dejected. Meeting Eiji where he stood, Ash matched his pace as they walked on. He bumped Eiji’s shoulder lightly, eyes trained on his feet. “You don’t have to smile. I know you don’t like this.”
“I don’t,” Eiji agreed, dealing Ash an answering shoulder-bump. “It’s very asinine, this process. All of the spectacle and none of the grief. Especially for a leopard.”
Ash glanced at him; Eiji’s smile was still there, stubborn like him, soft and brave and genuine like him.
No armour, Ash reminded himself. Eiji wasn’t smiling to make him feel better, he just…had a smile for this situation too.
What kind of hell, Ash wondered, would Eiji not have a smile for? What kind of devastation would ripple out into the cosmos if Eiji did not have a smile for a circumstance?
God, Ash did not want to find out.
“Of course, it’ll be a spectacle. It always is when beautiful things die,” he said simply. “Plus, a creature like a leopard, it’s too scary when it’s alive. The only way to come close to a deadly thing like that is in death.”
Eiji shook his head, decidedly unconvinced. “In lofty fairy tales, maybe. Here on Earth, my flowers die without ceremony and lament every day, and schoolchildren make friends with the poisonous snakes on their parents’ farms because their favourite classmate died the year before in a hurricane. I’m sure our poor leopard is no different. It could’ve had itself a home amongst us, a family to care for it, even a friend if it wanted one.”
“A friend like who? You?” Ash challenged, eyebrows raised. “Have you even looked a leopard in the eye? Seen its claws up close?”
Eiji winked back. “Despite what it looks like, Aslan, I really don’t scare that easy.”
Ash shivered pleasantly. He was still getting used to the way Eiji said, ‘Aslan,’ each syllable wrapped in gossamer thread and golden leaves, restless and delicate. He’d drown in the sound if he could.
They came upon the leopard soon enough, laying on its side limply with its tongue lolling out of its half-open maw. Ash could see its canines where they poked out over its lips, but they were not nearly as menacing as they would have been when the creature had been full of vitality. Its coat gleamed despite the shade of the tree it was under, dignified and striking even though the people around them were saying that the animal had been dead for thirty-six hours. Shunichi waved to them as they approached, sitting closer to the leopard than anyone dared, a sketchbook propped up on his lap.
“Mostly yellows and greens, please, Ei-chan,” he instructed even as Eiji’s wide eyes swept over the creature. “Mind the shadows and try to get the dye as dark as you can for the spots. I need it bolder than last time.”
Eiji nodded, flicking through one of the files in his hands, already muttering to himself thoughtfully. It was almost bizarre how business-like the two of them were. Shunichi was detached in a way Ash had never seen him, and Eiji had that focused glint in his eyes, like a flash of sea-glass at the bottom of a lagoon.
Right there for Ash to see, but unable to truly access without dipping beneath the surface himself.
He peered over Eiji’s shoulder, watching him examine a litany of brown swatches. Ultimately the file didn’t seem to have what he was looking for, so Ash held out one of the ones he had, and Eiji took it up gratefully. He flicked over to the section that contained yellow swatches and peeked up at Ash over the top of the file.
“You can wait here if you want,” he said, suddenly sheepish. “The smell will be stronger by the body, and I need to—”
“I’ll go with you,” Ash interrupted. He didn’t know what Eiji thought, but he didn’t scare that easy either. “You need to, what, make notes right?” I’ll carry your files and…and dictate if you need.”
Eiji grinned at him, all lemonade and orange liqueur, and Ash drank him in as they crouched by the leopard’s hind legs.
“Okay, so let’s start with this fur near the paws…” Eiji passed the file of yellow swatches to Ash and flipped open his notebook. They both leaned into each other as Eiji worked, breathing audibly through their mouths to keep the stench from overwhelming them and exchanging opinions in hushed tones.
Ash found that Eiji was very particular; he wouldn’t accept a shade match that was ‘close enough,’ and meticulously wrote down the ratios of the existing shades he’d have to mix to achieve the accurate colour. He scrunched his nose and swatted at Ash when he poked fun at the cartoon bird on his notebook, and blushed modestly when Ash complimented the wide range of colours he was capable of making.
“They’ll put you in a museum one day,” Ash said, only half-joking as they came away from the corpse for a water break. “You and your dorky notebook and all your pretty colours. They’ll wish they could have seen Earth like you did.”
Eiji rolled his eyes. “I am not the one with the crazy stories, with the wanderer life.” He dribbled some water from his bottle into his palm and splashed it into Ash’s face. “You’re the one they’ll put in a museum. You are more art than me.”
Ash squawked, wiping his face with the front of his shirt. “I am art?”
“You are,” Eiji shrugged, like it was just the truth, staring off into the distance as Ash watched his lips form the words with abject disbelief. “Picture, novel, song, everything. Intense, hilarious, tragic, everything. You are everything I can think of.”
Eiji’s eyes darted to meet Ash’s again, and he licked his lips nervously. Ah, that last part had just slipped out, hadn’t it?
“Every kind of art,” Eiji corrected with an embarrassed giggle. “You are every kind of art I can think of.”
Oh, please. As if that little change made what he said any less dreamy.
Ash looked down at his shoes, grateful that he wore his hair like this, long enough on the sides of his face to hide the colour on his cheeks.
“Ugh. Are you two this gross all the time?”
That voice.
Barbed wire through a fluffy duvet. Vinegar through chocolate cake. Glass cutter through paper flowers.
Ash whipped around; fists clenched at his sides. “Arthur,” he gritted out.
The smarmy jerk in question stared him down, hands in his pockets, sauntering out of the verdure like he was out on a stroll. “Glenreed.”
He had a couple inches on Ash in height, and yet Ash glared right back at him. “The fuck are you doing here?”
“Could’ve asked you the same thing,” Arthur retorted, deliberately knocking into Ash’s shoulder as he walked past him and towards the leopard’s corpse. “What is he, your security blanket now, Okumura?” he sneered at Eiji as he went.
“Leave him alone,” Ash snapped, even as Eiji scowled at Arthur’s retreating back. The two of them looked on aghast as Arthur knelt next to the leopard’s body and picked up the floppy end of its tail, waggling it around like it was something to be played with.
“And leave the leopard alone while you’re at it, too!” Ash tacked on, revolted.
Arthur scoffed, cruel flinty little eyes now becoming more interested in the leopard’s head. “You’ll have to do a lot more for me if you want to order me around, pretty boy.”
“Don’t talk to him like that.” Eiji’s voice was soft, but it was all bee sting and poison ivy, and Ash was genuinely thrown by how chilling it was.
“Or what, Samurai Boy? What the fuck are you going to do?” Arthur charged towards Eiji then, and Ash instinctually moved to put himself between them before Arthur could get in Eiji’s face.
“Alright that’s enough, all of you!” Shunichi scolded, his sketchbook abandoned, and arms poised to drag Arthur away if that was what was needed to be done.
Luckily for all of them, Arthur backed off on his own, suddenly seeming to think better of the whole situation.
“Be careful who you pick fights with, old man,” he snarled at Shunichi as he drew away from the lot of them. “Things are going to change around here soon. And when they do, you’ll be on the losing side.”
Shunichi’s face crumpled in confusion, Eiji’s mouth dropped half open, and Ash regarded Arthur suspiciously as he ambled past the trees. As Eiji exhaled in relief and went back to making notes on the leopard, Ash stayed in place, eyes narrowed and trained on the navy blue of Arthur’s shirt, which he could still see in snatches through the leaf cover. He realized that Arthur had never actually mentioned what he was doing here.
He didn’t live around here, and if memory still served, then his part time job was at the water treatment plant, which was in the bang opposite direction.
He wasn’t here to see the leopard either; Ash had been able to deduce that much from that little kerfuffle. Or at the very least, that wasn’t the only reason for him to be here.
So then why…
Ash crept closer to the trees, trying to be as inconspicuous as possible as he tried to catch a glimpse of what lay beyond this area, following Arthur’s back as he got further and further away.
Huh. From this vantage point, he could see something distinctly silver.
Silver and thin and knotted together, and was that a flash of hazard-sign yellow?
Oh, dear God, it was an electric fence.
Ash sucked in a sharp breath. He had no idea they were that close to the nuclear power plant.
His spine prickled, yet he couldn’t tear his eyes away. Arthur was going up to the fence, waiting on one side of it while…
Ash’s eyes widened as a man jogged up to the fence from within the power plant compound. He wasn’t wearing any uniform, so he wasn’t a member of the lower-level staff. Shit, this was someone high up then. Someone important enough to have what looked like an access lanyard and information to share, if the little white pouch clutched in the man’s hands was any indication.
So, what in the world was he doing, talking to some delinquent teenager like Arthur?
Ash didn’t dare to move, didn’t dare to breathe, lest the two notice that he was witnessing their conversation. There wasn’t any point in trying to catch what they were saying, he was too far away and if he went any closer, he’d just give himself away. So, he settled on memorizing what he could about the man and the exchange itself.
How strange. There was something familiar about the man, about the severe shape of his face, about the way his eyes scrutinized whatever was in the envelope Arthur handed to him once the white pouch was tucked safely in his pocket. Ash had never seen the man before, and yet…
Yet there was something about the way he carried himself that gave Ash a sense of déjà vu.
What gave?
Before he could think too hard about the whole thing though, Eiji’s voice rang in his ears, clear as windchimes.
“Aslan? Can I have the Volume 4 swatch file please? I need purples.”
Ash jolted, and spun around, eyes closed firmly. Suddenly he’d seen enough. What the fuck was he doing? Eiji was right there. Even if his back had been turned, what if he’d asked Ash what he was looking at? Ash could’ve pulled him into something horribly risky faster than a gnat could flap its wing.
He drew in a deep breath, forcing himself to calm down. He needed to be more careful. He couldn’t risk Eiji finding out about the power plant, about the rumours and the conspiracies, about—
About him. And what his family was really doing here.
Things were so, so good. Eiji liked him like this. Liked his voice, liked how he made things less hopeless, liked how he was…art, apparently.
And damn it, Ash liked himself like this too. He wanted to be the person Eiji thought he was; he wanted to be the kind of art that Eiji liked.
He didn’t want to ruin anything with the truth. He didn’t want to be dangerous anymore, he didn’t want to be alone.
So, he plastered a baffled smile on his face and approached Eiji where he was studying the leopard’s face, holding out the file Eiji needed.
“Purples?” he asked, kneeling next to Eiji, and thumbing through the colours in the file. “What’s purple about this leopard?”
Eiji lifted his pen to point it out. “See this part here? Near the mouth?”
Ash took one look at the discolorations near the leopard’s tongue and jaw and his heart dropped like a stone into his stomach.
Yes, it was purple. And purple in a way that Ash was well-acquainted with, from all the crime scene photographs Max and Jess had often left lying around on the dinner table while he’d been growing up.
It was poison. The leopard had somehow ingested a synthetic poison.
“Weird,” Ash muttered, for want of something to say. He looked over at Eiji; he didn’t seem to think anything was amiss as he compared dye swatches to the area. Maybe he thought it was just something that happened to the body when the animal died. Granted, Ash had only ever seen poisons do that to humans. Maybe it wouldn’t have the same effect on animals; maybe he was overreacting and—
“Very weird.”
Ash’s head snapped over to his left; Shunichi was also poring over the animal apprehensively. Their eyes met in silent agreement, and Ash knew his first impression about the cause of the purple tint was correct.
The temperature around him seemed to drop, and Ash stared into the interiors of the Woodlands as Max’s words resounded in his head.
Even when the staff there take breaks they go into the vine-infested part of the jungle.
The only things in there are feral jungle cats, so I can’t imagine what they’re getting up to.
It’s too shady.
Yup. He needed to tell Max.
---
“A high-level operative, you say? Are you sure?”
Ash nodded vehemently. He was sitting across from Max and Jess at the kitchen island, Max grimacing at his notes and Jess regarding him with exasperated concern. “Positive,” Ash told them. “He had one of those green lanyards.”
Jess grabbed Max’s arm. “That’s a Level 5 clearance.”
Max groaned, leafing through his notes. “Well, this certainly complicates things. What’s a guy like that doing handing shit off to some middling Aviation kid?”
“Arthur’s more than that, though,” Ash pointed out, recalling the day he’d first had the displeasure of meeting him. “He never admitted to anything, but…Shorter was sure he stole Sing’s bike last year. It sounded like he was into some sketchy shit; maybe he’s involved in whatever’s happening at the power plant.”
Jess seemed loath to accept that theory. “I don’t know about that, kiddo. Even petty criminals know better than doing this kind of stuff in broad daylight. Surely someone who’s involved in the power plant’s mess would be more careful?”
“Sure, if that someone had half a brain and quarter of a self-preservation instinct,” Ash argued, undeterred. “But Arthur doesn’t think of himself as a petty criminal. He thinks he’s some prince of darkness destined for greatness, so he doesn’t think he has to hide what he’s doing. If anything, I think he wants everyone to know he’s bad news, so they’ll be afraid of him.”
Max glanced at him doubtfully. “Ash, bud, look we get that you hate this kid, and it’s justified but—”
“He threatened Shunichi, Max.”
Both Max and Jess balked, and Ash went on, determined.
“It’s one thing to say ‘watch who you piss off’ to the rest of us kids; it’s a whole other thing to say that to a grown-ass adult that is very publicly friends with a cop. I’m telling you, if anyone knows what’s happening at that power plant, it’s Arthur.”
Max sighed. “Okay, but—”
“Ash’s got good instincts, Max,” Jess interrupted, shooting Ash a kind smile. “It’s worth looking into.”
Max shook his head. “I’m not saying he’s wrong. I’m saying what now?”
“Now, we bring Charlie into the loop for real,” Jess proposed. “If Arthur’s a serial offender, then he’s gotta have a record. We need information, known associates, all of that, if we’re going to link him to the power plant.”
“Right, you do that,” Max concurred. “I think I’ll focus on looking into the Level 5 operatives at the plant. See if I can’t scare up some possible suspects who’d fit the profile of our mystery man.”
“What about me? What do I do?”
Two pairs of guilty gazes settled on Ash. He swallowed and waited for the other shoe to drop.
Jess didn’t seem to know how to answer the question, and Ash knew exactly why. The dilemma in her mind was plain to him too. He went to school with Arthur, studied in a department that intersected with Arthur’s, and all his friends had known Arthur for years. It would be a no-brainer to ask Ash to see what he could find out.
And yet for some reason, neither Max nor Jess was making that demand.
“You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to,” Max said at length, sincere and resolute. “I meant what I told you before, kiddo. This is not your responsibility. Not that we don’t appreciate your input, you’re a damned smart punk, but the world is not going to end if you just look the other way on this one.”
Huh. It seemed that if Ash was lucky in one thing, it was in the grown-ups who’d been entrusted to care for him.
“Max is right,” Jess reassured when Ash looked to her, still incredulous. “We see how happy you’ve been these past few months, and we don’t want to ask anything of you that’ll get in the way of that.”
The beginnings of a smile began to pull at Ash’s cheeks, only to flee when Jess turned her trademark stern glare onto him. “Although, if you sneak out past curfew to Eiji’s house on a school night again, I will ground you and confiscate your cell phone; I don’t care how happy that boy makes you.”
“Wha—how did you even find out about that? I wait till you guys fall asleep!” Ash blurted out, flustered beyond belief.
“Max snores, kiddo. Just because I’m in bed doesn’t mean I’m asleep.”
“Oh, for fuck’s sake!”
“Language, Ash!”
---
It took Shunichi three weeks to complete the leopard painting.
Ash was struck by the attention to detail in it when he went with Eiji to see it, each spot on the creature’s coat placed precisely in the right place, a profound sense of horror and solemnity emanating from the image. But as much as it was a magnificent recreation of what he had seen that day, it didn’t reflect any of the emotions Ash had felt when he’d first seen the leopard.
Shunichi’s painting was almost sharp, wounding and harsh in a way that Ash didn’t remember the atmosphere being.
There was no mourning in the picture, no placid honour for the last in a long line of tenacious beasts.
Just like Eiji had said. All of the spectacle; none of the grief.
Ash wondered if this was what the people who’d commissioned the painting had requested. A crisp memorialization instead of a funeral.
“Do you know what the buyer will do with the painting?” he asked Eiji as they secured the glass jars of leftover dye in a carton.
Eiji checked that all the jars were sealed one last time, and then hefted the carton. “Extinction paintings usually go to the MIRA.”
“The Museum of Interstellar Relics and Art,” Ash mumbled to himself as they bid Shunichi goodbye and made their way over to Eiji’s bicycle. “I’ve always wanted to go there.”
Eiji regarded him curiously as he sat down on the carrier. “Why haven’t you? Isn’t it in Elysium?”
Ash gulped and took the carton out of Eiji’s hands to balance on his knees. The MIRA was in Elysium, but Max had gotten himself and anyone who bore the Glenreed name banned from there after he’d broken into its archives for a story. At the time, that had been the incident that had precipitated the scandal that had forced them to relocate.
But of course, he couldn’t tell Eiji that.
“My parents were always too busy to bring me,” Ash fibbed instead.
Eiji smiled at him, small and fleeting like a daisy petal in the wind. “That’s too bad.”
Eiji hopped on the bicycle, and Ash lay his heavy head on his back as they began their trip back home. He felt like there was wax stuck to the inside of his lungs. He always did when he lied to Eiji.
But Eiji was warmer than the early twilight breeze in his hair, and even wax has a melting point.
It did not take long for Ash to relax against him, just like he always did. “What’re you going to do with all this extra dye?” he asked. “It doesn’t have a very long shelf life, does it?”
Eiji was silent for a few moments; long enough for Ash to think that he hadn’t heard him. But then there was a tentative, “Do you really want to know?”
“’Course,” Ash answered, digging his chin into Eiji’s right shoulder-blade. “Tell me.”
“It’ll be easier to show you.”
They dropped that topic of conversation until they got back to Eiji’s apartment. They didn’t even address it while Eiji bustled about the kitchen as he fixed them sandwiches for dinner, or even while Ash helped him wash up and do the dishes. And just when Ash had thought that Eiji had completely forgotten about the whole thing, Eiji was tugging on his shirt sleeve and leading him to the second bedroom in the apartment, the one that Ash had never seen the inside of because its door was always firmly closed whenever he came over.
Yet today that door opened to him, only a little creaky as Ash stepped from the unconventional living room into a downright mesmerizing space.
Not a place to sit in this room, only a merciful swirling draft of air, let in from a little slit of a window. There were a few mismatched shelves lining the right wall, sagging under the weight of mixing bowls, palettes, spare jars, and faded aprons. Two metal bedframes rested with their legs against the left wall, accompanied by a couple of rickety old stools, a few easels and what looked like home-made canvases for painting.
Eiji flicked on the lamps for light, and that was when Ash truly saw the plethora of little paintings clipped onto the bedframes, none of them as large as those that Ash had seen in Shunichi’s house, but utterly breath-taking, nonetheless.
Ash’s eyes travelled slowly over the pictures.
A solitary sage plant amongst the rubble of a landslide. A baby bird leaping from a nest of broken eggs.
Not a care for lines and definitions in these pictures; these were diffused and feverish instead, shimmering with an urgent sort of verve.
A child on a bicycle zooming down a pot-holed hill. A warm pot of soup, bubbling by an empty refrigerator.
So non-devastating. So bursting with bittersweet joy. Spider-silk strong; spider-silk fragile.
Red lightning. Blue grass. Golden sea.
The colours didn’t correspond to how anything looked in real life, but perhaps that was the point. Or perhaps there wasn’t a point at all.
Existence didn’t need a point, the paintings said. To exist, to survive, was miracle enough, was celebration enough, was art enough.
“What do you think? Are they any good?”
Only when he heard Eiji’s voice did Ash register that he was smiling. Ear-to-ear, in his eyes, in his heart, in the pit of his stomach, in the tips of his toes.
“Any good,” Ash breathed, “doesn’t even begin to cover it.”
Eiji beamed, firefly-bright in the softly lit room. “It makes me happy. I just use whatever colours I have on hand, so they’re a bit crude. You’re the first to see them.”
Ash watched the light dance in his eyes. “What about Shunichi?”
“Oh God, not yet; maybe when I’m more confident. I don’t want to disappoint him.”
Ash smirked. “But you were okay with the prospect of disappointing me?”
Eiji flinched away from him dramatically, and Ash laughed, altogether too loud for the worshipful air in the room.
“It’s not that,” Eiji threw back, impish sparks in his honest voice. “I just wasn’t okay keeping it from you any longer.”
Ash couldn’t help the flash of guilt. He was keeping so much from Eiji.
Oh, but how Eiji smiled. Hesitant like a butterfly just figuring out to fly, elated like water bursting from a dam. He made it difficult to wallow in self-reproach for too long.
A demigod in his strength, Eiji. A force of nature in his vulnerability, Eiji.
“Will you teach me?” Ash asked hopefully. “To paint?”
Eiji searched his face, surprised. “You want to learn?”
“I want to see what makes you so happy.”
“It’s a messy process. And I’m barely qualified.”
“Hm, don’t care. Also, that second part’s just a filthy fucking lie.”
That pulled a guffaw out of Eiji, and he jerked his head in the direction of the shelves. “Grab an apron then, young grasshopper.”
Ash rolled his eyes but did as he was told. He helped Eiji arrange the mixing bowls and palettes on the work-stools and bring out the dye jars they’d gotten from Shunichi earlier. Eiji fitted him out with his own canvas mounted on one of the easels, and then prepared one for himself right opposite.
Ash surveyed the colours laid out between them. They were mostly yellows and tans, with some dark greens, intense browns and even a charcoal black and dusty pink thrown in.
What could he make with those?
He was still mulling over this as Eiji explained how to dilute the dyes with water to make lighter shades, and how long to wait before trying to apply a second coat. It was only at the end of Eiji’s spiel that another important detail hit Ash upside the head.
“Wait what do we paint with?”
Eiji grinned and held up his hand in front of his face. Ash blinked at him stupidly until his meaning sunk in a moment later.
“You can’t be serious,” he spluttered.
Eiji simply splashed some of the butter-yellow dye onto his canvas in response. “Paintbrushes are incredibly expensive, you know,” he said, entirely too amused at Ash’s expense. “Even Ibe-san can afford only three. I haven’t saved up enough for one yet, so I must make do with my hands.”
Ash gawked at him for a few seconds, listening to the scraping of his fingers against the canvas before resigning himself to his fate.
Fuck. He’d been hoping to impress Eiji with a nice painting made just for him, maybe one of his bicycle or of the ecosystem sitting in his living room, but God, that’d be too complicated and intricate even if Ash knew how to paint properly with his hands.
No, he had to stick to something simple. Something that wouldn’t look like a shapeless blob once he was done with it.
Flowers, he decided. Flowers were easy to do, and they’d look pretty too.
Ash noticed then that Eiji was not using any of the black or the pink, so he settled on painting black pearl roses in a vase.
He still had the one Eiji had put in his hair the first time they’d hung out.
It was pressed between the pages of one of his weightier textbooks. At first, it’d seemed too beautiful to throw away; now it bore the memory of Eiji touching his hair like he was a precious flower.
Ash smiled to himself as he set about fashioning the vase, opting to have it sit on a table. It was a struggle to get the colour to go where he wanted; the dyes were quite runny and didn’t co-operate with his fumbling fingers. But he was nothing if not persistent, and in the comfortable hush that had fallen upon them, he managed to paint a decent vase.
Then he began to work on the flowers themselves, and all hell suddenly broke loose.
The stems came out too fat. The dye-stained heel of his palm left random blotches wherever it accidently made contact with the canvas. And worst of all, he couldn’t get the petals even.
“Son of a bitch!”
Ash slammed down his little bowl of dye on the work-stool next to his easel, and Eiji met his eyes over the top of his own painting, his half-smile like a touch of moonlight. “Trouble in paradise?”
“No,” Ash harrumphed to keep his pride, holding his wet hands away from his body and tossing his head lightly to get a particularly annoying strand of hair out of his eyes. “This just—I don’t know how to—ugh, flowers suck.”
“Alright, alright, there’s no need for blasphemy,” Eiji snickered, wiping off his hands on a spare rag and coming over to his side. “What are you trying to do; maybe I can help.”
Ash drew his attention morosely to his three sorry attempts at making the roses. “Well, I’m leaving smudges everywhere, everything’s too boxy; I wanted dainty curves, but I can’t get the angle right, and these colours here aren’t blended enough, also how do you even attempt thorns—”
“Okay, time out,” Eiji cut in soothingly, hip-checking him. “One thing at a time.”
He picked up the untouched rag on Ash’s work-stool and took Ash by the wrist as he cleaned off the dye on his fingertips. “If the dye’s still wet on your hand, then stop and wipe it off, genius. That way you won’t get any smudges.”
Ash pouted at him. “You weren’t doing that.”
“That’s because I know how to work on details while holding my fingers away from the canvas,” Eiji deadpanned, his hand still encircling Ash’s. “Now, if you want nice curvy lines, you can’t do them with your pointer finger, you have to—”
“I wasn’t!” Ash protested. “I used my pinkie, so they’d be thinner, but—.”
Eiji gave him a firm look that meant ‘Shush,’ and Ash promptly closed his mouth. Eiji then turned his hand over to show Ash his palms and swiped his thumb over the tops of his fingers. “The pad of your pinkie isn’t that much thinner than the pad of your pointer finger. That’s why you’ve got to use the side of your thumb for curves. It’s less surface area, and your thumb is easier to control than your fingers. Here, let me show you.”
And as if Ash wasn’t feeling zaps of light in his veins already, Eiji flattened himself against his back and placed his face over Ash’s shoulder, going up on his tiptoes so he could still see the half-finished painting. One hand manoeuvred the edge of Ash’s thumb into the bowl of dye and the other rested idly on Ash’s waist.
Ash didn’t know whether to tense or give in.
Oh my God, Eiji was like a quilt, warm and cosy and soft where his hair tickled Ash’s cheek. Ash almost squeaked, but his teeth clamped down on his bottom lip before the sound escaped, and there they stayed as Eiji guided his thumb such that it hovered a centimetre away from the canvas.
“Don’t press down too hard now, or the stem will come out thick again.” The whispered instruction sent little tremors zigzagging through Ash, but Eiji’s hand was steady enough for both of them, and Ash tried his best to concentrate as his thumb made first contact with the canvas.
Evidently, he was applying too much pressure, because he felt Eiji smack his hip lightly not a second later. “Lighter, Aslan.”
He slackened his thumb a little bit, and Eiji tsked again.
“Lighter.”
“Might as well take my fucking hand off the canvas at this rate,” Ash said under his breath.
“Fine, make boxy flowers then,” Eiji groused, starting to shift away from him.
Ash felt one touch of the air of the room against his back—air that was somehow more frigid than before—and immediately twisted around to grab Eiji by his apron with his free hand.
He pulled pleadingly, a little tongue-tied. Eiji let him stew for a moment, before relenting and assuming his previous position.
“You’re a menace,” he spoke into Ash’s ear, an expresso-edge in his voice and whiskey in his eyes.
Ash smiled at him, veiled and slight, only a tad pleased with himself. “Just help.”
This time he kept his touch as light as possible as Eiji moved his thumb in a decisive arc, starting at the spot where the top of the stem would go instead of starting at the bottom, the way Ash had been doing.
“Oh, this is way better,” Ash exclaimed, taking in the elegant stem.
“Right?” Eiji said, mirroring his grin. “Now just do smaller strokes like this to outline the petals, and then fill them in.”
Ash nodded and rued the loss of Eiji against him as the latter stepped back to watch him work. Ash wiped off the green dye from his thumb and went for the black. He tried a few strokes, but each came out shakier than the last. He groaned and looked over his shoulder at Eiji.
“You’re going too slow,” Eiji critiqued patiently. “Don’t think so much; just do what feels right. Commit.”
“I can’t not think,” Ash whined. “There’ll be no going back if I do it wrong.”
Eiji laughed him off. “Just try. Turn off your big brain and see where your heart takes you.”
“My heart can’t take me anywhere; it’s a blood pump with no inherent ability to mobilize my locomotive appendages.”
“Oh, fuck you and your scientific accuracy; you know what I’m saying!”
“Ugh, fine! There, you happy?”
Ash really had meant to swipe randomly at the space above the stem. But with all his attention focused on proving Eiji wrong, he’d ended up moving his thumb in whatever way had felt the most intuitive. And sure enough, there was a fine-looking petal, just as Eiji had promised.
“What the actual fuck.”
“See?” Eiji giggled, punching him in the shoulder. “I knew you could do it.”
“Artists and their metaphors,” Ash hmphed, blowing a dislodged lock of his hair out of his eyes. “Too hard to follow.”
“Engineers and their rationales,” Eiji retorted without missing a beat, brushing said lock of hair behind his ears. “Too silly for art.”
Heaven on Earth, Ash would’ve dumped the entire bowl of dye on Eiji’s head if he didn’t look so much like a dream, if that voice of his didn’t sound so much like rain on lily pads, if even the ghost of his touch didn’t fill Ash up with molten magic.
“What did you end up making?” Ash finally asked when his painting was safely clipped to the bedframe to dry.
Eiji flipped his canvas around for Ash to see with a flourish. “Do you like? I call it ‘Stupid Engineer.’”
Ash wanted to scoff at that. He wanted to roll his eyes and stick out his tongue and tell Eiji how much of an asshole he was.
But he couldn’t. Not when that painting that Eiji had spent the last three hours on was of him.
Of the view Eiji had had of Ash as he’d worked on his own painting. Easel blocking out most of his body, one hand reaching for a dye bowl on the work stool next to him. The colours in it were all very subtle, pastels really, except the colour of his hair.
The marigold of the ceiling light spilled over his shoulders, lit up even his jeans, and his hair looked like champagne in candlelight.
Regal, precious, and yet charmingly ordinary.
“How come my face isn’t in it?”
Ash cringed internally even as he said it. God, if that was what his mush of a brain was going to come up with, he’d be better off keeping his mouth shut.
He should’ve complimented Eiji, but instead what came out was “You can see my face from there, can’t you?”
Eiji shrugged and gestured to the empty jars of dye. “I didn’t have the right green for your eyes,” he said by way of explanation. “But I will make it one day.”
“Yeah?” Ash said, sly despite the nectar coursing through him. “You think Shunichi will ever ask for that?”
“I won’t do it for Ibe-san. I’ll do it for myself.”
And shit, maybe Ash would’ve felt less intoxicated if he had chugged tequila neat. Maybe he would’ve felt less bewitched if a fae troublemaker had doused his head in pixie dust. Maybe he would’ve been less giggly, less speechless, less filled with butterflies in a world where Eiji didn’t exist.
But who the fuck wanted to live in a world like that?
Not Ash.
He liked this; the way Eiji was so gently, yet acutely addicting.