Chapter Text
Entry #3 Ripe Plum
The colour of eager devouring.
The colour of plenty, the colour of not looking back.
The colour of space lightning, squashed blackberries, scintillating crystals.
The color of a sunset’s edge, the colour of enchantment.
The colour of craving.
---
“Lynx, come in; Lynx, come in.”
Ash startled, nearly dropping his pencil. He still wasn’t used to a call sign and the fuzzy crackling from the walkie-talkie echoed in the cavernous classroom. Nevertheless, he leaned forward and took his legs off the desk as he reached for the device.
“Talk to me, Alex.”
“We need you on deck; Moby Dick just squawked 7700.”
Ash sat up straighter in his chair. “How bad?”
“Good enough for a safe landing; worse than usual for you, though.”
Ash groaned, the undercurrent of concern leeching out of him to make room for annoyance that had become all too familiar. “ETA on Moby Dick?”
“Already cleared to land.”
Ash shook his head. “On my way.”
“Copy.”
The walkie-talkie fell silent, and Ash stretched as he stood up, pulling up the sleeves of his coveralls over the tank top underneath it. It was warm here in the classroom, but there were always buffeting winds kicked up by the spaceplanes on the landing strip. He swapped out his reading glasses for his Aviators and closed the textbook he’d been reading:
The Future of Spacecraft Dynamics: Controls Design and Autonomous Systems
Guess he wouldn’t be getting through more than those first two chapters today.
He stuffed the ungainly thing into his designated locker at the back of the room along with the rest of his writing supplies and sauntered out, catching the light switch on his way.
Ten minutes later he was already on his way up from the basement, taking the stairs two at a time in loping strides.
It was funny; two months ago, he would’ve been winded five floors in, but now he could get as high up as the fifteenth floor without stopping to catch his breath. Though of course that was more to do with the fact that he’d had practice, thanks to the ridiculous number of times he’d had to go between the fifteenth floor and the fucking basement of the building within his first week of officially starting at the Academy.
Because floor fifteen was home to the Aerospace department of Mecha, and it was the department that Ash had been eyeing the most keenly after he’d taken the placement and aptitude tests, hoping and praying that he’d be cleared to join it.
He’d thought he’d be a shoo-in when the reports had come back from the placement tests and declared him eligible to waive most of the freshman and sophomore lecture classes, but it’d been the aptitude test that’d chosen that moment to kick up a bump in the road.
“It says you have great potential to flourish in Combat,” his test administrator—some professor called Alexis Dawson—had told him, entirely too excited for Ash’s liking.
“It also says I would be a good fit in Aerospace,” Ash had responded, hands clasped behind his back rigidly as he’d stood in the middle of the man’s office in open defiance of the chairs placed in front of his desk.
Dawson had regarded him carefully. “Mr Glenreed. I won’t insult you by reading your IQ score back to you; I’m sure you know how smart you are.”
How Ash had managed to bite back the instinctual ‘How the fuck does that matter?,’ God only knew.
“But along with your smarts, you seem to have an acute sense of responsibility and integrity,” Dawson had continued, and Ash had gotten the sense that the man wasn’t complimenting him as much as sizing him up like a troublesome system that was rebelling against the algorithm. “You’re just the type of candidate we hope for in the Combat department. And while expertise in Aerospace doesn’t make you useless by any means, it is in our Combat graduates that the space colonies invest the most money and resources. It is an honour to qualify to be part of it, and you are much likelier to receive job security and good pay as a Combat graduate than as an Aerospace graduate; hell, you might even be able to lock down a home in Elysium in just two years!”
Ash had rolled his eyes.
Home in Elysium. As if it could even be called that. Ash had been there, done that, lived the fucking nightmare.
He’d wondered if Dawson would accept it if he told the man that he’d spent entirely too much time on the wrong end of weapons to stomach going anywhere near them for academic, or even worse, innovative purposes. Sure, he could defend himself and Michael with a basic point-and-shoot semi-automatic handgun in a push-comes-to-shove situation—which mercifully enough Max and Jess had kept them away from so far—but jeez, that didn’t mean he wanted to spend six hours every day with ballistic missiles!
He'd considered telling the man this for one insane, irritated second. But for all his excellence in the things that didn’t really matter, vulnerability was not something that Ash was in the ‘very gifted’ category for, least of all when it came to strange scrutinizing adults.
“With all due respect, sir, my interest in combat mechanics is tangential at best,” Ash had said coolly. “I will be bored in the Combat department, and I assure you, all my IQ will be…what was that word you said…useless…if I am bored.”
Dawson had chuckled sadly, and Ash had bristled as he’d opened his file and leafed through it. “I applaud you, Mr Glenreed. Not everybody has your scruples.”
Ash would’ve lashed out at that, at the implication that this man could hope to even speculate on the littlest thing about him and his supposed scruples, but he hadn’t wanted to interrupt Dawson while he signed off on his request to join the Aerospace department, so Ash had bitten his tongue and looked away.
“Collect your lanyard and coveralls from the front desk on the fifteenth floor. Welcome to Mecha, Mr Glenreed.”
And that was how Ash found himself here now, on the bridge that ran between Aerospace in the Mecha building and the hangar on the roof of the Aviation building. He could hear the tell-tale wind-cushioned screech of a spaceplane landing, and he picked up the pace. Dashing past everyone in the hangar, he barely gave the sentinel ground crews enough time to read the ‘Rigger’ printed on the back of his coveralls before bursting onto the runway itself.
The spaceplane sat lopsided upon the tarmac, the flamboyant purple text labelling it as ‘Moby Dick’ distorted from heat damage, and one of its engines sputtering miserably as it spewed sooty smoke.
Ash smacked a palm on his forehead and jogged up to the poor machine even as the door next to the cockpit hissed open and the ladder slid out.
“The fuck d’you do this time?” he exclaimed as Shorter climbed out of the thing, shaking the sweat out of his hair as he took off his oxygen mask and helmet.
The wayfarers were quick to find their way back onto Shorter’s face, yet Ash caught the puppy-dog look in his eyes before they disappeared. “Why do you automatically assume that I did something?”
Ash glared at him. “Oh gee, I don’t know, maybe it’s because I keep having to replace the heat shield on this thing and re-rigging the stabilizers because you keep pulling reckless ass shit at Mach 7.”
“Awful lot of ‘bah, humbug’ energy coming from someone who hugged my spaceplane when he was first assigned as its rigger.”
“What did I tell you about bringing that up again!” Ash snapped, shoving Shorter away as he continued to cackle in time to the coughs coming out of the spaceplane’s busted engine. So, Ash had gotten a teensy bit emotional when he’d finally, finally gotten the chance to work on a real machine. Sue him. “Just tell me what happened here.”
“Bird strike. Took one of the engines straight out of commission after I came down from the lower stratosphere.”
Ash sighed; he supposed it wasn’t Shorter’s fault, this one, singular time.
“I’ll see what I do,” he said, fanning some of the smoke out of his face as the two put some distance between them and the spaceplane. “I’ll have to perform a proper exam to know for sure, but don’t count on being able to fly for the next three weeks at least.”
“Three weeks?!” Shorter cried, aghast. “What, are you trying to kill me?”
Ash shot him a withering look, but inside his chest an exasperatedly warm feeling settled. He liked to joke often about how Shorter had clouds for brains, but there was a genuine part of him that was convinced that Shorter really did have the sky in his veins; that his friend was content to feast on speed and adrenaline and the razor’s edge between technological advancement and impossibility for the rest of his life.
How nice it was, to love something like that.
Ash wished he knew what it was like, wished he knew how someone went from infatuation to intoxication to devotion to fervour.
He had only ever experienced fascination, the desire to know more, to hoard details and information and hold them close until they suffused into him.
At least that was how it was with aerospace, with HVAC, with all the things he’d studied over the years.
But with people…with—with a certain upstairs neighbour with searching, soft eyes like sinful coffee, maybe fascination didn’t have to be the end-all be-all. Maybe he could—
“Ash? Ash, acknowledge. Are you trying to kill me?”
Ash blinked himself out of his daze and cleared his throat. “I will if you don’t stop pestering me,” he salvaged gruffly, walking back into the hangar as Shorter trailed after him. “That’s how long it takes to fix an engine, and the poor thing’s got at least three other things wrong with it apart from that.”
“Aw, come on, can’t you get Alex to help with it or something?” Shorter pleaded, wringing his hands.
“Hard pass,” Alex answered before Ash could open his mouth, emerging from the air traffic control tower and fanning himself with a clipboard. “I’ve got my hands full as it is, what with admin clearing Arthur to fly this year, and Bones and Kong officially on ground crew.”
Alex was a year older than Ash, a fitter who’d spent some time in spaceplane assembly, but retreated to air traffic control this year after an equipment malfunction had broken his right arm. Ash was told that he was better at the new work than he’d ever been as a fitter, level-headed and stern without being an immovable bully; consistent in everything he did: instructing, shepherding, even defying.
Ash liked him; he was a tempering presence in their little group, especially with the likes of Shorter, Kong and Bones in attendance, who had a propensity to engage in all types of ill-advised shenanigans when the opportunity presented itself, and to create opportunities for said shenanigans if one was not conveniently open to them.
“Arthur got his clearance? Sheesh, they let anybody into a spaceplane these days, don’t they,” Shorter said, reverently eyeing his machine as if appalled that someone who did not share his love for flying would deign to set foot in it.
Ash knew there was a snide comment in here somewhere, but Shorter’s semi-regular plane-compromising aside, he couldn’t help but agree with the guy. He wouldn’t trust a short-fused egomaniac like Arthur with so much as a tricycle, let alone such a magnificent spacecraft.
“Yup, he threw off drill rhythms three times last week, just so he could loop-the-loop,” Alex told them disdainfully. “I thought Professor Meredith was going to blow a gasket.”
Shorter snorted. “Fucking Arthur. What the hell did he do that for? Nobody’s watching him up there.”
“Tell that to him. I dare you.”
Ash scoffed. “Dumbass. If he wants to fuck around and clip a wing on someone else’s plane that’s his problem. I just hope Meredith doesn’t put me on the roster for his machine; I’m not cleaning up his mess.”
“Oh, I don’t think you have to worry about that. I’m sure Shorter will keep your hands tied,” Alex snickered, even as Bones and Kong towed Moby Dick into the hangar, its engine still smouldering. Shorter slung an arm over his shoulder and Ash elbowed him in the ribs in an attempt to look put upon, but the smile was there in his eyes; he knew Shorter could see it.
It was neat, this.
People to share his lunch and interests with. People to suffer through Endurance Day with. People to laugh with and at.
People who were his friends.
---
Eiji had gauze wrapped around his elbow today.
He was leaning up against his bicycle, one foot tapping on the ground in time with the tune he was humming, wisps and snatches of the song threading into the wind threading into his bangs, dislodging the individual strands like hesitant caresses. His skin wore sweat like lustre, and his face was hidden away from the sun by a cap. A pale blue cap, which tamed his hair as well, if for no other reason than to keep its diffused darkness from bleeding into the sky and bringing on the merciful night.
He was a flower in a cactus path; the only oasis at the end of the parched expanse of the school day, but all of it faded into background noise before Ash’s eyes, because Eiji had gauze wrapped around his elbow, and there was a pinprick of blood where his elbow met his forearm, and—
“What happened here?” Ash asked, soft and tentative as he forewent his usual greeting to skim the edge of the bandage with his fingertips.
“Oh, there you are! I was waiting,” Eiji said, smiling despite his tiny wince, one that had Ash pulling away from the injured area abruptly. “It’s nothing at all; just a scrape from landslide training today.”
“Landslide training?” Ash regarded him dubiously as he went to pull the backpack off Eiji’s shoulders in the same instance that Eiji went to shrug it off. It moved seamlessly from Eiji’s back into Ash’s own hands, like a stream flowing into a much larger river.
Natural, easy, music even.
One more legato movement among many.
Ash adjusted himself on the bicycle carrier, ignoring the stop-start-hammer of his heart as Eiji climbed on as well, suddenly all too close. “The fuck do you need landslide training for? There’s no mountains here.”
“There’s no guarantee that we’ll be here forever,” Eiji countered, the grieving sigh a solemn undercurrent in the smiling sea of his voice. “Our professors figure that we’ll eventually be pushed further inland, up into the mountains, if our summers keep getting worse. So, we must be ready.”
Ash swallowed down the bitter taste of that eventuality. He knew all too well that everything was temporary, but the way Eiji looked here in Wolfsbane, with his demigod grace and his tranquil routine and his extended family of vibrant flora…
Ash didn’t know why, but it just felt like it was meant to be everlasting.
That it deserved to be everlasting.
Ash held on to Eiji’s waist a little tighter as the latter began to pedal. They turned out of the Academy gates and started for the godforsaken hill that was their most prominent hurdle on their way home.
“So, what happens in landslide training, they just chuck rocks at you from over the top of the hell-mountain as you climb up?” Ash quipped.
Eiji laughed, throwing him an impressed glance over his shoulder. “Pretty much. Though they don’t use rocks. Old bricks are better for drills; they always crumble on impact.”
“Is that how you got hurt? An old brick hit your arm and exploded?”
“Yeah, I couldn’t believe it! I didn’t see it until it was bouncing off the edge of my cap, and then the next thing I knew…”
Ash glared as viciously as he dared at Eiji’s cap now that the boy’s back was turned.
Silly cumbersome thing.
Kept the sun out of Eiji’s eyes alright, but my God, it interfered with his training; it kept the wind from doing that adorable, rumpled thing to his hair, and most egregious of all, Eiji’s eyes went from spellbinding supernova to common extra-bright sparkler in its shadow.
“Why don’t you wear sunglasses instead? They’ll block your view less than caps and sunhats,” Ash suggested, a solid 78% unselfish in his motivations.
“Ah, no, that’s really okay; sunglasses are not my thing.” Eiji’s breaths came in staccato, and something told Ash it was not the hill climb that made them stagger so.
“What’s wrong with them? I saw a lot of other Vitae kids wearing them last week.”
Eiji laughed nervously, and Ash felt him stiffen under his palm. For some reason Eiji wasn’t looking at him. “Like I said, not for me.”
“But why, though?”
I can’t—” God, Eiji was mumbling now, “—I can’t seouovrmmmh.”
“Say what?”
“I can’t see out of them very well.”
“Huh?” Ash pondered out loud. “That makes zero sense unless—”
The lightbulb went off in Ash’s head at the same time as the bicycle skidded to a stop, and the thought remained unfinished as Eiji promptly twisted around to clamp a hand over his mouth.
“Yes, okay? Yes.”
In some far corner of his brain Ash remembered that Eiji was confirming his guess, but hell, it was hardly important. Here on the steepest part of this hill, on a precariously parked bicycle that was a gravitational hair’s breadth from rolling back downward, with Eiji’s blackberry-sweet eyes four meagre inches from his own, Ash’s brain was having trouble stringing one thought onto the next.
“Yes, I have the tiniest vision impairment,” Eiji whispered, urgent and borderline fearful. Ash didn’t like the look on him at all. “Just a little annoying short-sightedness; negative 0.5 power; nothing to worry about. Please, you cannot tell anyone; no one knows, not even Ibe-san or Shorter.”
“What’s the big deal? So, you have glasses.” Ash was trying to be calming, but his voice was still tamped down by Eiji’s hand. He pointed to the pair tucked into his own coveralls. “I have glasses too, for reading.”
Eiji shook his head, just a touch too panicked. “This is different. I cannot be Vitae if I have glasses. We cannot…we are not allowed to need anything other than the basics; something about there being no eye doctors at the end of the world. If they find out I need glasses to see 20/20, they will not let me graduate. They will make me switch departments; I—I couldn’t bear it if they made me do that.”
Well, wasn’t that just aggressively utilitarian.
Ash wanted to shout about how fucking ridiculous and exclusionary that was, but the mushier, more Eiji-drunk part of his brain was seriously considering the idea of pressing a quick kiss to Eiji’s palm. Was Eiji the type to appreciate that; would he like little kisses for comfort, for…for assurance and solidarity? Because that was what Ash wanted to provide; he just didn’t know how…how words typically did those things.
Slowly, he moved Eiji’s hand off his face. “I get it. I won’t tell anyone; I promise.”
Evidently that was the right thing to say, because in that moment, Eiji was a rush.
His relieved giggles were the rush of a waterfall over glass-smooth rocks, his hushed “Thank you, Ash” was a rush of leaves on a forest floor swept up by a delicate breeze, and the way he held Ash’s hand and squeezed it tight was a rush of serotonin and dopamine and whatever other hormones made brain cells burst into rose petals.
Needless to say, Ash rode the high from that rush all the way back to their building.
---
“Why Vitae?”
Eiji looked up when he heard Ash speak, head tilted to one side. Behind them, indigo leaves boiled merrily in a bubbling pot so that Shunichi could paint the skies blue, and a pedestal fan right opposite them kept the sweat from beading distractingly on their foreheads. They’d been chugging along in relative silence so far, plonked on the floor of Eiji’s apartment with a snack bowl of grapes and their homework for the day. For Ash, homework meant notetaking on the third chapter of The Future of Spacecraft Dynamics; for Eiji it meant fashioning strong usable rope from various wide leaves plucked off of spiny desert brush.
Ash had been watching him out of the corner of his eye for a while now, taking in the meticulous manner in which Eiji buffed the leaves with a flat triangular stone, stripping the flesh to reveal the stringy fibres underneath, and he simply had to know.
“Why did you choose Vitae?” he asked again, his voice level as he reached for a grape.
Eiji smiled knowingly, his lips parting to speak like the slow-opening buds of a truth unspoken. “I want to live on Earth.”
Ash followed his eyes as they flitted to the grapes with interest, before going back forlornly to the messy state of his hands, covered in leaf and plant sap as they were.
“Oh? No yearning for space adventures, for infinity and beyond?” Ash pressed, picking up another grape and tossing it into the air such that it arced over the space between them.
Eiji only had to lean a centimetre forward to catch the grape squarely in his mouth, and Ash’s fingers thrummed with the ease of it, with the music of the movement.
Legato. Connection.
“No, nothing like that,” Eiji replied, grinning as he got up to check on the dye. “It is not beautiful up there.”
What a transgressive assertion. Specially coming from someone who’d never been to space.
Ash was a little puzzled, a little enthralled.
He raised his voice so that he could be heard over the sound of Eiji rinsing his hands. “Is that the purpose of your life? Pursuit of beauty?” he teased. “Shallow.”
Eiji snorted as he carefully strained the leaves out of the dye and turned off the stovetop. “Pursuit of happiness,” he corrected primly. “Beauty is not limited to the aesthetically pleasing things that you can see. It applies to ideas, feelings, everything that makes us happy. What is beautiful about spinning around in doomsday ellipses in a giant metal sausage forever? Nowhere new to go; nothing new to see. No colour, no wind, no—”
“No imminent death in a fucking asteroid collision,” Ash pointed out.
“No perhaps not,” Eiji laughed, rich and sweet like a cherry on a chocolate sundae. “But we wouldn’t live the way we do now, without the threat of Azrael. We’d be quieter, pettier, fidgeting on the edge of cliffs instead of diving off them. We’d be cowards. Like most of the people of the space colonies.”
Eiji towelled off his hands and returned to his place on the floor, this time a smidge closer to where Ash lay on his front.
“I don’t want to be a coward.” He reached into the bowl between them and tossed a grape in Ash’s direction.
Perfect parabola, yet it bounced embarrassingly off the tip of Ash’s nose and rolled onto the floor.
“Tsk. You missed,” Eiji chided, swiping a thumb over his nose, and it was only then that Ash felt himself return to his earthly body. There was no lead in his chest anymore, only air. Buoyant air that made his mind float. Restless air that whirled and rearranged, that both reached out and squirreled away erratically. Warm air that smacked of sentimental conviction on the exhale.
Air that unmade the fog, and in the clearing showed Ash another glimpse of Eiji Okumura’s beating heart.
Ash longed for the full picture.
It was only for a moment, but Ash longed, and it hit him like lightning.
Blink-and-you’ll-miss-it, three hundred million volts of pure, unadulterated captivation.
He picked the grape off the floor and threw it back haphazardly at Eiji. “That doesn’t count,” Ash grumbled. “I wasn’t ready.”
For the grape. For this life. For Eiji.
Stupid, unarmoured, invulnerably vulnerable, magical Eiji.
Eiji simply bent forward, cleanly catching the grape in his mouth once again. That comet-tail gleam in his eyes, that rosy half smirk playing on his lips as he bit the fruit in half emphatically.
Smug fucking bastard.
God, Ash could taste liquored toffee on his tongue and flintstone sparks on the fringes of his sanity.
“So, what about you?” Eiji asked, another grape between his fingers already. “Why Aerospace?”
Ash sat up, leaning back on his palms in feigned nonchalance. “It’s personal.”
Eiji pouted at him, unconvinced. He tossed the grape at him with more force than necessary. “I told you mine.”
“So? I didn’t agree to any quid pro quo,” Ash said through a mouthful of grape.
“Fuck you,” Eiji huffed, going back to his rope weaving. Ash giggled at the crease on his forehead, at the stubborn way with which he stared only at the fibres in his hands and nothing else.
Ash was a little sorry then, that he was not able to look in Eiji’s eyes as he talked, that he could not bare himself as casually as Eiji had.
Ten thousand weak links in his armour, and yet Ash was unable to put it aside. He buried his own face in his textbook, fiddling with his pen as he spoke.
“Aerospace because it just…makes sense. In a universe where everything is muddled and grey and hypocritical, machines, flying machines, just—they make sense, you know? They fit into the grand scheme, they’re useful, they go to unbelievable places, they follow five rules on one day and then break ten the next. They’re constants; if you care for them right, they’ll live forever.”
“Is that the purpose of your life?” Eiji’s voice was gentle, patient, like an ascending piano solo. “Pursuit of immortality?”
Ash peeked up at Eiji then, at his unpretentious brightness, at the way he drew Ash in as much as he was drawn in himself.
Mutual gravity.
Inescapable, yet Ash had never felt this unstifled.
No, if anything the tension released, the seal snapped, and the vacuum inside Ash breathed the free air.
He shook his head. “Pursuit of permanence,” he admitted, quiet as a mouse. “I know they’re not real, that—that they’re not for me, but I…I’d like a forever. If…if there is such a thing out there, if they hand those out at the street corner, or if they fall from the sky like goddamn death asteroids…whatever, I’d like one.”
Eiji took his time smiling, pensive and deliberate like a rising sun making a morning from waning night.
And then, then he moved towards Ash, and whispered, elixir-smooth, relaxed and sacred all at once.
“I’d like one too.”
---
Ash wondered, in some parallel universe, what would’ve happened if Eiji’s phone hadn’t gone off.
If Bones hadn’t decided to call right then, if they’d still be at Eiji’s apartment, trading grapes and fragile musings back and forth to the tune of bubbling dye. If Eiji would’ve leaned in even closer, if he’d have ripped off the rest of the world’s sorry façade and shared even more secrets with Ash.
But as it stood, Ash was trapped in this particular universe, back on Eiji’s bicycle carrier and speeding entirely too frantically to the grocery store because Bones had called to tell Eiji that something was ‘finally here.’ What this thing was Ash hadn’t the foggiest idea, because Eiji had simply leapt off the floor and dragged him back into the watery early evening sunlight with a ‘Just shut up and come with me; you’ll find out soon enough.’
Which…well, it miffed Ash just a teensy bit.
Because he thought Eiji told him things.
All things, even things that he wouldn’t tell Shunichi or Shorter or Sing.
Ash was used to being in the dark with everyone else, what with the ‘New Starboy’ label plastered all over him. He was used to irately demanding that they clarify things for him. But Eiji…
Eiji had never withheld information from him. He’d barely even try to deflect questions if Ash was the one asking them. He always melted, always acquiesced, always rolled his eyes and smiled and dropped the act.
Only for Ash.
And yet here he was, refusing to tell Ash what the fuck they were hightailing it down to the grocery store for at this odd-ass hour, when Bones knew, and Kong knew and Alex and Shorter and everyone else bloody knew.
“We’re almost there; just…” Eiji said distractedly when Ash asked about the whole thing for the third time. “Ten minutes, Ash, just give me ten minutes…”
Ash hmphed and dropped it, holding onto Eiji’s t-shirt with an awkwardly clenched fist and leaning away from him just to underline that he was, in fact, full-on sulking.
Not that that got Eiji to pay him any mind.
No, Eiji was too focused on the road ahead of them, barely even stopping to brake at bends and turns, drifting the bike with the kind of easy precision that made it look effortless. Ash could hear his breathing, purposeful and paced to sustain the speed at which they were moving. He’d never seen Eiji this serious; even when racing with Shorter he’d always had that contagiously unbridled smile on his face.
There was none of that now; just a taut, determined neutrality to his otherwise cute features, like frost over a meadow in full bloom.
Ash would’ve been genuinely mesmerized if he hadn’t been mid-sulk.
“Jeez Eiji, how do you do this without hacking up a lung?”
Ash whirled around, gaping in disbelief. He never thought he’d hear a crack in Cain’s imposing voice; never thought he’d witness the stoic patron of noble Mecha sound like he was actually struggling, as he came up behind them on his own bicycle, Shorter and Sing in tow.
Eiji did not turn to answer him, only shifting into the left lane of the road to make more room for them as they strove to keep up with him. “I actually try on Endurance Day,” he snickered playfully.
Out of respect for his sulk, Ash kept his laughter inside his own mouth.
Shorter though, now who could stop that man from howling like a hyena, especially as he freewheeled past Cain. “Damn, you gonna let him talk to you like that, Cain?”
“Don’t have much of a choice, do I?” Cain laughed. “I can’t catch him. At least not on this piece-of-shit bike.”
That Ash couldn’t argue with. Though, he felt sure, bike or not, Eiji was not the type of person you caught.
A: because Eiji wasn’t the type of person who ran away in the first place.
But also, B: Eiji was not for catching.
He was for holding, for returning to, for dissolving into.
And those things…Well, if Ash was being honest with himself, he wanted to be the only one to do any of that.
But my God, the little dirt patch outside the sprawling grocery store was really not the place to unpack that thought.
So instead, Ash settled for dismounting the bike, hopping off as soon as Eiji put up the kickstand. Alex waved to them from the doorway, and Eiji jogged up to him without so much as a second glance at anyone else.
“How’s it looking?” he inquired breathlessly.
Alex looked grave, which confounded Ash even further. Yeesh, what was the big emergency; why were they all in a race against time for stuff at the grocery store of all places?
“I’d say you’ve got about ten minutes before Mrs. Owens and Mrs. Coleman get down here,” Alex said, nodding towards the interior of the store. “Bones and Kong are already inside, but I’ll stay here to stall them just in case.”
Eiji nodded and flashed him a grateful smile. “Okay, thanks Alex.”
And then, he just—just fucking ran off inside!
Ash stared after him, indignation mounting by the second. Why did Eiji even bring him if he was going to pretend like he wasn’t even there?
Shorter must’ve noticed how he was rooted to the spot, hands on his hips with a frown on his face, because he was soon sidling up to Ash, somehow looking both placating and sly. “Hey Ash, you wanna come look at some plums with me and Sing?”
“Plums?” Ash repeated dumbly, following them into the store. “I’ve never had plums.”
“They’re in season, now! Very sweet and flavourful; you’ll like them,” Sing told him excitedly, showing him around the space.
It reminded Ash very much of a warehouse, with its tall ceilings, halogen lighting and goosebump-inducing air-conditioning. They started out near the far-left wall, where there were step stools for reaching higher shelves, and Sing and Shorter lead him to a mound of fist-sized round fruit, their skin the colour of red wine.
“Pick carefully,” Shorter told him, casting a critical eye over the plums as if he were the sole arbiter of their destiny. “You want a rich, deep colour on the skin, a good weight in the hand with only a touch of give when squeezed.”
Ash nodded absently, taking the basket Shorter held out and trying to find a place to start. In the time it took him to pick up a plum to inspect, Sing had already looked over seven and deemed them too unripe, stalking about with a connoisseur’s air as Shorter followed behind him with a basket and added his own input.
Man, Earth people did not fuck around when it came to their groceries, did they?
Ash reached into his pocket to see how much cash he had on him, then settled on buying no more than five plums. He had put only two in his basket and was reaching for a potential third when he felt an extra weight clatter into said basket.
Specifically, four extra weights.
Ash straightened, confused more than anything else as he peered into his basket.
And what did he find there, but four avocados.
Avocados, that Ash had loved since before there had even been teeth in his mouth.
Avocados, that explicitly did not grow on Earth because they needed far too much water than Earth settlements were able to spare.
Avocados, that Max had told him to say goodbye to when they’d moved, because the space colonies controlled their trade and were not overfond of sharing them with even the richest of Earth settlements.
Avocados that he didn’t think he’d see again for who knew how long; avocados that were now sitting in his basket in fucking plurality, with Eiji’s panting, smiling, hopefully-pink face right above them.
“Surprise. Michael told me these were your favourite.”
Ash blinked at him owlishly, his heartbeat thunder in his skull.
“How is this possible?” he breathed.
“Sometimes corrupt middlemen traders steal from the space colony stores,” Eiji explained with a sheepish wink. “They can’t take too many, but a superfood like avocado goes for double on Earth than it would in the colonies, so we get lucky with a shipment sometimes. But this is once in a blue baboon, so—”
“I think you mean blue moon.”
“Blue baboon,” Eiji insisted. “Those are rarer. Which is why I wanted to rush over here; avocados barely last an hour because everyone wants them, and I…I wanted you to have some.”
“Understatement, dude, you’ve never been more of a whirlwind!” Kong cheered, from somewhere to his left. Or was it his right? Ash didn’t know anymore; the only direction that mattered was forward because that’s where Eiji was.
“Seriously,” Bones added on. “Eiji elbowed sooo many old ladies. Lowkey thought he was going to cut a bitch.”
“I would never!” Eiji retorted, horrified, and Ash had to laugh.
He simply had to, because Eiji, ‘please-and-thank-you-ma’am; I don’t swear in front of Sing because he’s a baby’ Eiji had just incurred the wrath of several elderly neighbourhood women just to get him some avocados.
“I was just…very stern with them,” Eiji reassured Ash, as if he legitimately expected Ash to be upset with him, when in fact champagne bubbles were bursting inside of Ash’s chest. “They were taking more than their share; I saw them!”
“There’s an avocado share?” Ash asked, bewildered.
“Oh yes, it’s only two avocados per household,” Cain informed him, materializing from behind the giant grape crate opposite them. “It’s too nutritious a food to not at least try to divide amongst everyone equally.”
Ash looked back at Eiji then, the picture of abject surprise. “Wha—then how’d you get away with taking four?”
“Two are your family’s share, and two are my share.”
Okay. Okay, the sulk was officially lifted.
Because Eiji was a wonderful, thoughtful, sweetheart to everyone, but he only became this brand of gorgeously fierce for Ash.
Ash had never felt like a nobody; everyone had always paid an unnerving amount of attention to him for as long as he could remember. But today, in the middle of the produce aisle in a grocery store on Earth, was the first time he’d ever felt special.
Like his happiness was important.
He placed the biggest of the avocados back into the empty basket that swung from Eiji’s forearm. “Don’t make me hug the fucking daylights out of you in front of everyone,” he muttered as he brushed past Eiji, the tips of his ears blushing scarlet.
Eiji giggled and put a hand on his waist to stop him. A cotton cloud of heady joy swelled within Ash, and if he’d had any less composure, he’d have sunk into Eiji right then and pulled them both to the ground, to hell with everyone watching.
“Like I said, I want you to have them,” Eiji said, putting the avocado back in his basket.
“Take a plum,” Ash blurted out. “I’m buying plums.”
Eiji smiled, silken moonlight on a cruel inflamed world. “Sure. Funny how that worked out. Plums are my favourite.”
Ash’s eyes darted suspiciously to Shorter, who grinned at him and mouthed ‘You’re welcome.’
10/10 wingman, Ash decided. Would totally recommend to a friend.
---
Remember how Ash had elected to buy five plums?
Yeah, fuck that. He could live without pocket money for a week.
Plums were Eiji’s favourite. So, he bought nine.
He bit into one now, perched on Eiji’s bicycle carrier per usual. They were cycling back at a leisurely pace, in a scattered group rather than a single file line, all munching on some fruit or the other. Ash was resting with his back against Eiji’s, idly watching the road elongating before him as they crested over a hill, the muddy blue ocean claiming the lower half of the horizon. His face was turned to the peachy-orange sky as his teeth broke the plum’s skin, and the burst of sweetness on his tongue felt like a mouthful of ambrosia.
“These are fucking amazing,” Ash murmured, a little gone already just from one bite, turning his head far enough for him to catch Eiji’s eyes over his shoulder.
“Yeah? Share.” Eiji opened his mouth, swivelling his face a tad to the right, and Ash flipped the plum in his hand to the uneaten side. He twisted around and guided the fruit forward so that Eiji didn’t have to take his eyes off the road while he took a bite, and Ash shuddered pleasantly when a rivulet of plum juice ran down his wrist.
“Mm, sweet,” Eiji concurred, even as Ash spun back around, his hummingbird heart trilling with an exhilarated song. “Give me one more.”
“Let me finish this one first,” Ash said, nudging him lightly. He regarded the plum in his hands, opposite sides curving in where they’d each taken a bite.
Nothing alike in detail, yet exactly the same in concept.
Two sides of the same coin. Two renditions of the same musical score. Two bites taken out of the same plum.
Fate. Legato. Sweetness.
Ash bit into the plum again, only this time it was the same side Eiji had eaten from. It was a bigger bite; a bolder bite; Ash was positive he could feel the pit of the fruit collide with his teeth. But he didn’t care. He wanted more, whatever more meant.
And this time, the taste was nothing less than a mouthful of the sunset itself.
Ash would’ve closed his eyes then, content to drift endlessly in this syrup-thick limbo as they all meandered home, purposely taking the long way round just to stay out later. But Bones he was learning, seemed to have a penchant for interrupting moments of bliss.
“What’s that?”
There was a dormant sort of alarm in his voice, and it jolted everyone out of their fruit-induced stupor. They all looked where Bones was pointing, at a dark silhouette on the horizon, seeming to amble through the sea and towards their shores like it’d been plundered by something unforgiving.
“Ship,” Cain hissed, stopping in his tracks altogether. “It’s a ship.”
Everyone braked then, watching the lonely vessel as it came closer and closer. Ash observed his friends; an anxious quietude had settled over them all, the air thick with foreboding as straining eyes scrounged for answers.
“Where—” That came out as a squeak, so Sing coughed and tried again. “Where do you think it’s from?”
“Hard to say,” Shorter said, placing a comforting hand on his shoulder. “With that trajectory though, my best bet is Euphorbia.”
Kong shivered despite the humidity. “Poor souls.”
Ash poked Eiji’s arm with an inquisitive finger. “What’s wrong?”
Eiji sighed heavily. There was this futile sort of sorrow in his eyes, and when he looked at Ash his smile was tight-lipped. “A ship on the horizon usually means that a settlement, or at least part of it, has been destroyed in a way that is impossible to bounce back from. It is not common, but it happens more times than anyone likes. Natural disaster; freak weather; who knows what it was this time.”
Ash drew in a sharp breath. “So…so the people on that ship—they’re—”
“All that’s left, yes.”
Ash’s eyes widened. He looked at the ship again; got a really good look this time. It was…God, it was so small. Surely, this was not all of them? Surely the number of people that had survived was greater than what could fit on that thing?
“Will they come to live here?” Ash asked, a tightness in his chest like a noose closing around his ribcage.
“Not all of them,” Alex lamented, tearing his eyes from the ship, more frustrated than anything else. “We’re almost at capacity as it is.”
“Capacity?” Ash scoffed, hardly able to believe his ears.
“Settlements don’t take more people than they can holistically support, and Wolfsbane is a small place,” Shorter expounded. “They’ll find space in Hemlock, I’m sure. There was a flood there last year, and they…well, they have some room now.”
Room. Room as in space for new people now that…now that the original inhabitants were dead.
Suddenly Ash felt the urge to either laugh manically, or be very, viscerally sick.
Space colonies or Earth.
He supposed the game of survival was brutal in either place.
“Come on, let’s go home. I’ll make tea,” Eiji soothed, snapping them all out of their funk with the clicking of his kickstand as he put it up. “This is not our fault. We can do no more than our best.”
No, no Ash supposed it wasn’t their fault.
What were they, after all?
Specks, specks of dust in the wind; plankton floating in the great big soup of the cosmos.
There was always something uncontrollable to contend with; something leviathan and deadly and so utterly random that one’s world crashed down around them before they even had the chance to put up their hands to defend themselves.
The only real difference was that the space colonies had human monsters, swollen with greed and selfishness, and Earth…
Well, Earth had nothing but reactions to the garish wound of civilization, one that humans were always unwittingly picking at and never allowing to heal, in their own bid to survive.
A wound that had been opened long ago, before any of them had even been born. The scars from it were theirs to bear for sure, but the blame?
No, the blame was not theirs.
Eiji was right; they had no more to give than their best. And if their best wasn’t enough, then…at least they’d sleep easy knowing they’d tried.
At least they wouldn’t be cowards.
---
It was 12.07 AM when Ash finally trudged back home.
The living room was dark when he snuck in, soundlessly turning his key in the front door, and sliding inside in one quick motion. It was utterly silent, and Ash congratulated himself as he went to lock the door securely behind him.
That was when a switch flipped deafeningly, and the flame-yellow light above the kitchen island came on.
“Is this what you mean by ‘I’ll be home for dinner,’ young man?”
Ash cursed. Damn it, Max.
He turned to face the man, who was hunched over a disarray of documents that practically served as a tablecloth over the kitchen island.
“Sorry. Eiji made avocado and shrimp salad,” Ash offered by way of an excuse, worrying the peeling skin by the cuticle of his thumb with a nail.
Max nodded along sardonically. His eyes were barely open, and fatigue was wrapped around him like a blanket, but he still found the wherewithal to be infuriatingly amused at Ash’s expense.
“Oh yes, I know,” he said. “Because Eiji texted me to ask, ‘please is it okay Max if Ash stays for dinner? I promise it’s good healthy food; we also have plums!’ You want to explain why that text didn’t come from you?”
Ash turned away; arms crossed and more than a little red with childish self-consciousness. “We figured you were likelier to agree if he asked. You wouldn’t yell at Eiji.”
“I’m not yelling at you either, punk.”
Holy shit. He wasn’t.
His voice was…unperturbed. Proud even.
“You aren’t,” Ash agreed, a little out of breath. He narrowed his eyes at Max. “Why aren’t you yelling? Aren’t you mad?”
Max paused, staring into the ceiling as if he was actually thinking about it, as if he was actually considering the notion. And though Ash had always been able to sense his theatrics from a mile away, this was different. This was Max picking through his emotions; this was Max trying to find the right words.
“Jess is mad,” he said eventually, his eyes still trained on the ceiling. “It’s a school night, and she wants you to get a good amount of sleep. So be ready to get chastised over breakfast tomorrow. But between you and me—” Max righted himself, and smiled at Ash, earnest fire and the most infinitesimal crack in his eyes, “—I’m happy for you. You’ve always been too uptight for your own good. It’s nice to see you loosening up, making friends, breaking rules ‘cause you’re having fun.”
Ash didn’t have any more response to that than a bitten-back smile, disguised with a petulant grimace.
Max was right. There was no argument to make.
Fuck, maybe there was an argument to make, and Ash just didn’t want to make one. He remembered a time when all he’d need was a mistimed cough to antagonize the hell out of someone.
But right now, God, he was just so…sated.
He was full of avocados and plums and mint tea, full of laughter and hooting and sandpaper music from a dinky old radio. Full of a too-fast heartbeat and firework electricity and soft, easy breaths.
For the first time, embers were enough. Ash felt no need to start a fire.
He was—peace would be a stretch, but…he was certainly at a ceasefire.
“Thanks. For letting it slide,” he mumbled sincerely. “I know I’m difficult and—”
“You’re not difficult, Ash.”
“You don’t have to spare my feelings.”
“You don’t have to convince yourself of shit that isn’t true.”
Ash scowled. Damn it Max, way to pull at the unfortunate thread that would further entangle already entangled emotions.
“Yeah, whatever. Just take your thanks and go to bed, old man.”
Max chuckled and took the win with a shrug of his shoulders, though he stayed put on his stool by the kitchen island.
“Not so fast. I gotta clean this up first,” he said, gesturing to the mess of papers before him.
“What is all that, anyway?” Ash inquired, walking over to examine the stuff.
“Entry and exit logs, mostly,” Max detailed, exhausted and disorganized as he gathered all the papers into a stack. “For the nuclear power plant.”
Ash’s hair stood on end. Suddenly the apartment felt too quiet, unnaturally still like the instant before a downward drop.
“The power plant? What’s happening there?”
Max threw up his hands, grim in the way that always made him look just a little bit wizened, just a little bit scary. “That’s what the fuck I’d like to know. The rumours were true; it’s still being financed by one of Golzine’s money laundering fronts, and they’ve got these unmarked trucks going in at weird hours. There’s way too much security… even when the staff there take breaks they go into the vine-infested part of the jungle, and Shunichi swears up and down that the only things in there are feral jungle cats, so I can’t imagine what they’re getting up to…it’s too shady.”
Ash felt a familiar prickling under his skin, icy rank fear poised to strip his bones of the nectar and fluff that he was agonizingly close to accepting as normal for him.
As what he deserved.
“Great,” he said, flat and dejected. “So, things are going wrong already.”
Max’s face twitched, like the words had dispelled a trance. In that moment, he looked guilty; he looked as if…as if he’d let somebody who’d meant a great deal to him down. Ash had a good idea of what was going through Max’s head.
He was older now, after all. Ash knew the green of his eyes was more than mere resemblance now.
At this point, he was sure it was a constant reminder of old ghosts. Sometimes Ash wondered how Max even managed to keep him around.
“Nothing’s going wrong,” Max declared, and the ugly thought vanished from Ash’s mind before it could truly take root. “Not this time. I’m going to see this through to the end, and I’m going to finish it this time. For you; for me. We’ve run from this nonsense long enough. I want us to be free.”
Ash buried his face in his hands, and he could swear he felt the chains on them clatter; he could swear he felt the grip of deadly destiny dragging him into tar. “That sounds so hard, though. I just want to be happy,” he confessed. “I want to be normal.”
“Then leave the worrying and investigating to your old man, okay?” Max said kindly. “You just live your life. Do school, hang out with your friends, sneak back home past curfew. Be sixteen. This is not your responsibility.”
“No but…” Ash sniffed. “I don’t want—I don’t want anything to happen to you. Especially because of me.”
Max waved the concern off, his bravado a consolation if nothing else. “I’ll be fine. Jess watches my back like a hawk; shotgun and all.”
Ash’s jaw dropped. “Where the fuck did she get that?”
Max wiggled his eyebrows. “Apparently Nadia’s boyfriend is a wizard.”
“Maybe you should look into him,” Ash remarked. “Very suspicious.”
“Nah, Charlie’s a good dude,” Max said good-naturedly. “Remind me to introduce you guys one of these days; he makes excellent potato pancakes for us before Chang Dai opens on weekends.”
Ash laughed a little then, an old comment from last week surfacing in his mind like a coin that had somehow learned to swim. “Eiji says to always trust a person who makes good potato pancakes. They’re difficult to get exactly right.”
Max jumped off the stool he was sitting on and cracked his back, grinning at him insinuatingly. “That Eiji kid is good for you.”
“You think?”
The words were out before Ash knew what he was doing—bashful and breathy and erring on the side of thrilled—before he even comprehended that Max clearly didn’t mean it in that way.
He clapped a hand over his mouth as realization dawned on Max’s face, and the man disintegrated into a fit of muffled giggles.
“Damn, it’s like that?”
“Shut the fuck up!” Ash squawked, stomping off towards his bedroom. If he wasn’t done with this conversation before, he was definitely done now. “I’m not talking about this with you!”
Max clutched his make-believe pearls in mock offense. “Why not? I am good at romance! I got married, didn’t I? I believe I have valuable expertise.”
“Ew, gross, spare me,” Ash growled. “I’m going to bed.”
“Oh, no you don’t,” Max cackled, following him into the hallway. “I need details; it’s your first crush! Ooh, I’m so excited—”
“Go away!” Ash complained, crackling like a burnt-out firework. “I want sleep.”
“No, what you want are Eiji-dreams—”
“Max!” Ash shrieked. Partly from shock, partly because the man was infuriatingly bang on the money.
“Would you two cut it out!” Jess’ pissed-off voice rang out from the primary bedroom and they both jumped. “I swear, if you wake Michael—”
“She says as she continues to scream,” Max groused.
“I’m already awake.” The door to the bedroom opposite Max and Jessica’s opened to reveal a very peeved toddler, clutching the corner of his blanket like he’d use it to smack some sense into them.
Instead, Michael just grabbed Ash by the hand and began to pull him into their room. “Goodnight, Dad. Ash is going to bed now,” he announced.
And miraculously enough, that was the end of that. Max bumbled his way through an apology and retired to his bedroom to face the wrath of Jess, and Ash collapsed gratefully onto his bed.
“Thanks for saving me, Mikey.”
“No problem,” Michael giggled, plonking himself down next to Ash’s outstretched hands. He was looking at Ash expectantly, like he wanted to be rewarded for his intervention.
Ash raised a baffled brow. “What?”
“You like Eiji, huh?” There was a mischievous twinkle in Michael’s eyes, and Ash rolled over dramatically, whining into his pillow in disgruntled protest.
God, why did he open his mouth? He usually had an infallible filter. Why did the mere mention of Eiji’s name short-circuit his brain?
“Do you like him because you think he’s pretty?” Michael asked eagerly, snuggling up to him. “Or is it because he’s so nice? Do you like him because he can pick his bike up with one hand? Oooooh, do you think he could pick you up with one hand?”
Oh, that was a thought. That was an intriguing thought indeed. Ash filed it away carefully for future dream-fodder.
“I’d like it if he picked me up,” Ash said softly, a blaze under his skin and a puddle in his chest, his face still planted firmly in his pillow. “With one hand or otherwise.”
“So, you like him because he’s strong!” Michael reasoned, yanking on his ear.
Ash batted his hand away, no ire left in him. “It’s not just one thing.”
“How many things is it?”
Ash laughed, helpless and tired and buzzing with the memories of the whole day.
Eiji’s heaven-song laughter, the way he was so understatedly awesome, his empathy, his tea, the faded dye-stains on the tips of his fingers, the raspberry blush on his cheekbones, his sass, his honesty, those dorky-ass bird t-shirts he loved so much, his eyes, his eyes, his eyes, so cosy and precious and perceptive and sparkly, his pluck, his thoughtfulness, his butterflies-inducing voice, oh, God—
“It’s everything. It’s his everything.”
It was ironic, that Max had called it a crush.
That word was too violent, too devastating, and instant for what Ash was feeling.
No, this thing was different…It felt like slowly, tenderly being put back together.