The details of Ash's escape from the mental ward reached Eiji in snippets - a remark from a guard here, the murmur of a custodian there. Hushed words, quick, disbelieving. Bits of dialogue, quotes spoken in an alarming falsetto:
"I'm a sweet candy bar …"
"… I melt like honey in your mouth …"
These whispers, interspersed with flaming cheeks and shocked laughter.
"What's more," one of the guards said, far too loudly, "He was good. I hate to say it, but I had pins and needles going up my back."
"Same here," his colleague said sheepishly, scratching the back of his head. "Guess it's true what they say, huh? About his life before, with that mafia don?"
Eiji couldn't fully stop to listen, much as it pained him. What had Ash done?
Time was of the essence. Eiji steeled his shoulders, bolting down the bleak white halls in what he hoped to be the manner Ash had trained him. Like a great, powerful cat - a lynx, of course, sure-footed and smooth, quiet but deadly. He held his Smith & Wesson at his side in a viselike grip, sweat beading in his palms and at the base of his neck.
No, he decided, he was no Ash. Ash, for all he had suffered, had never been such a chickenshit - not outwardly, anyway.
And then, blaring out of one of the open doors just ahead -
"I'm so horny …"
Eiji skidded to a halt, choking back a gasp. That voice was too soft, too high-pitched to belong to any of the guards. Eiji poked his head through the open door, throat completely dry.
There, up on a crude overhead projector, was Ash himself. But hadn't Ash escaped by now? Unless …
"Rewind it, Jeff, I wasn't watching closely enough."
"Course you weren't, sicko!"
The room was filled with at least a dozen security guards, all in identical starched blue uniforms, staring slack-jawed at the screen before them.
It took Eiji far longer than usual to understand what he was seeing. Ash, poised on the edge of the bed in his cell, in his thin white smock, was singing some nonsense tune and running his hands greedily along the soft V just below his waistband, between his legs. Eiji's entire body pricked with what he understood to be two parts warmth, three parts horror.
"I haven't had any for so long," the Ash on the screen moaned, eyes closed, lips parted, as he ran a hand through that luxurious blond mane of hair. Eiji was peripherally aware of the excited babble of the guards, along with a number of hoots and hollers.
It was Ash dragging his tongue over his lips that did it. The wet mouth, the succession of moans that accompanied it … Eiji's gun slackened in his hands; he felt on the verge of dry heaving just as he was aware of a hardness between his own legs, try as he did to deny it.
"Well, goddamn!" One of the guards shouted, guffawing with laughter. "Guess all that stuff about him being Golzine's pet wasn't so far-fetched after all!"
"Shame he bounced," another guard mumbled. "We can only replay this thing so many times, huh?"
"Aw, shuddup, Mike," the first guard snapped. "Don't remind me!"
As soon as his hardness dissipated, as soon as he gained control over what he realized to be his own sobbing breaths, Eiji tucked his gun away and sprinted down the remaining length of the hall. Once he was, at last, out in the crisp autumn air, Eiji unloaded the contents of his stomach into the nearest clump of bushes.
Ash hadn't said more than two words in all the hours they'd been reunited. He spent most of the evening curled up on his side in bed, staring out their tiny window at the neon cityscape below. The occasional traffic light flashed, throwing his face into unnatural reds and yellows.
Eiji sat on the bed opposite, staring at his feet so as not to look at the boy lying across from him.
"You're sure we're safe here?" Ash asked suddenly, his voice muffled in blankets.
"Hm? Oh. Yeah." It seemed as though Ash hadn't spoken in years - he certainly hadn't managed to construct a full sentence until now. "This is the safest hotel in Chinatown. Nobody asks questions - at least, that's what Shorter told me awhile back. Ah. Shit." Eiji noted the stiffening of Ash's back at his friend's name. "I'm sorry."
"Forget about it." Ash curled even further in on himself, away from Eiji, wrapping his quilt tightly about him.
"Ash?"
"I'm tired, Eiji."
The moon shone harshly through the open window. Eiji stood, pulling the heavy, dark blinds together, wrenching his gaze deliberately away from Ash's bed. A sob caught in his throat for what felt the dozenth time that day, but he didn't dare give in to it. He needed to be strong, if only for the boy lying beside him.
"Good morning, sweetheart."
Eiji blinked awake to find Ash perched on the bed across from him. Sun streaked through the window, touching his hair like a gilded halo. Not a bad way to begin the day, certainly - that is, until Eiji remembered.
"You looked so young, asleep like that," Ash mentioned, smiling with what Eiji realized to be genuine delight. "It was nice. No worry lines on your face or anything. Hope you don't mind me saying so."
"Young?" Eiji grinned, pulling himself upright. "Which one of us is seventeen here?"
To Eiji's surprise, Ash doubled over in laughter. In that moment, his own worry lines seemed to disappear, too.
"It's not my fault you look like you're about twelve."
"Oh, shush!"
Ash kept laughing, his entire body vibrating with glee. It occurred to Eiji how very like his own age Ash looked when he did that - in a way he hadn't before, not in all the time Eiji had known him. To see Ash looking, acting, like an ordinary teenager - it made Eiji's heart ache, agonizingly so.
There was no convenient time to tell Ash that he had seen the footage, and Eiji didn't like the idea of keeping that knowledge a secret, like the rest of those perverts had. To this revelation, Ash only nodded solemnly, hands balled into fists at his sides, twisting in the bedsheets. He hadn't so much as moved from the bed all day, and Eiji didn't blame him.
"You do what you have to, to survive in Dino's world," Ash said, each word carefully measured. "Especially when you're the boss' prized pet." These last words cut the air like a knife.
"I'm sorry, Ash," Eiji said, staring miserably. "I'm so sorry that happened to you. That this keeps happening. You … you understand that you don't deserve this, right? Any of this?"
Ash's shoulders heaved in a shrug. "I don't even know anymore. It's happened enough times that I begin to wonder. At least I have, I don't know, some control over it. Knowing how wet I can make those bastards is power it its own way, isn't it?"
"Ash!" Eiji cried. "Don't you - don't you ever say that!"
"You seem more worked up about it than me." Ash's eyes gleamed, hard and unseeing.
"You can't tell me you're not scared. I'm scared," Eiji said, the words thick on his tongue. "I'm scared for you, Ash, do you hear me? I'm completely sick with worry." He recalled the strange combination of arousal and horror he had experienced earlier that day, upon viewing the footage. "I'm scared because you're good at what you do, you really are - but you shouldn't have ever had to be, not for those reasons."
Eiji was vaguely aware of, at last, doubling over in sobs, as though it were happening outside himself, to someone else entirely.
"Eiji, calm down!" Ash bellowed. "You can't start this, or I'll - I'll …" Eiji, his rock, his guiding light, his only true source of warmth and stability. "I need you to be strong for me. Please."
Without warning, tears began streaking down Ash's face, too. To Eiji's alarm, they were ugly tears, complete with hiccups and cheeks flushed crimson. Eiji, recovering from the shock of seeing Ash look anything less than, well, Ash, smeared his own tears away with the back of his hand and leaned forward, holding out both of his arms.
"Ash, will you come to me?"
Ash nodded heavily and collapsed into Eiji's thin shoulder, his body shuddering spasmodically and growing far heavier than Eiji would have expected. Eiji wound his arms around Ash's frame, and they sat like that for what might have been either minutes or hours, neither knew for sure. Eiji smoothed Ash's wispy blond bangs back from his head, wiping tenderly at the tears coating the boy's face and neck. To his astonishment, Ash pulled their bodies close together, cupping one of Eiji's cheeks and gently kissing the other, not once but three times.
"Hey," Eiji said, noting the childlike way Ash had curled himself partially onto his lap. "You - you don't have to do this."
"Mm-hm. I know. I want you to hold me, Eiji. I want you to."
Ash kissed his cheek again, and again, in almost rhythmic motions. His pecks, though minute, tasted intensely of salt, the salt of both their tears.
Eiji derived no pleasure from the kisses - not physically, at any rate. Rather, his entire body grew limp with relief. He couldn't do much for Ash right then, but he could do this. And, according to Ash himself, that was more than enough for the time being.
"You'll be okay," Eiji said soothingly. "I know it doesn't feel like you will, but I'll make sure of it, I promise. Till my dying breath."
"Thank you." Ash's upper lip brushed Eiji's lower one. "Thank you. Thank you." A kiss on the mouth, for each word of thanks. "Thank you."
Eiji's heart leapt in his chest in a way that was both fretful and giddy.
Till my dying breath.
The blood flowed, hot and piping, through Ash's veins - not with its usual fight-or-flight fervor, but with a warmth that infused his every limb.
Till my dying breath.
Till my dying breath.
Till my dying breath.
And perhaps even beyond that.