Beta-ed by lovely Aori, despite the fact that she has been busy the past week and has disowned me quite a few times for making her edit heartbreaking fics.
Inspired by the realization that Banana Fish started with Ash not wanting photos - at least of his face - to be taken, and ended with Eiji having an album of sides of Ash that Ash has never shown anyone else but him, because Eiji has always been always been Ash's exception.
"May I take a photo of you?" Ibe-san had asked when they first met Ash, eager to interview and write an article about this seventeen year-old kid who united all major gangs of Manhattan under his rule.
A quick nod, before he looked away. "Not of the face," he stipulated, and Eiji remembered looking at Ash's side profile - as beautiful and delicate as it was wild and fierce - and wondering why.
Then Ibe-san told him about what was revealed in the interrogation room - the videos - and Eiji felt a sudden urge to knock any cameras or video recorders out of anyone's hand who had ever pointed or plan to point them anywhere remotely near Ash Lynx.
It had only taken Ash one look to realize something was on Eiji's mind, and when he finally wheedled it out of him, Ash laughed, tossing his head back with such boyish joy and wild abandon. Eiji flushed red, sure that Ash was making fun of him - because yes, Eiji knew he wasn't strong, he wouldn't be able to protect Ash even if he wanted to, even when he wanted to, but Ash didn't have to laugh at him! -, but then Ash looked at him, laughter peppered out but lips still fondly quirked, his gaze not mocking as he had expected but instead tenderly soft, and the indignance in Eiji's veins faded.
"It was a long time ago," Ash said, nothing attached to that statement at all, merely stating a fact for Eiji's benefit.
Eiji's cheeks puffed up upon Ash waving off his abuse before he could even think about it, but the 'pfft' that Ash let out had Eiji deflating. He could not maintain his anger, not in face of Ash's carefree amusement, purposefully engineered or not.
Instead, he adopted the same tone as Ash, a soft statement of fact, and said, "But you didn't want us taking your photos. At least not of your face."
Ash's smile faded as something like surprise replaced it. "You remembered," he said, barely an exhale, and Eiji didn't know how to tell him ' how could he not' ?
There was so little about Ash that was forgettable; he was remarkable in every way, and Eiji wanted to remember every bit of him.
"There's nothing worth memorializing, nothing worth remembering, that's all," Ash said, flopping backwards onto his makeshift bed. He weaved his hands behind his head and said, looking up at the ceiling, "No one to remember me either. When I die, better for all traces of me to vanish from this world."
"I'll remember you!" Eiji blurted out, nevermind his previous thought that he didn't know how to tell Ash. Eiji had to tell him now, wanted to, even if he wasn't as good with words as Ash and would be rambling more than he had to. "I can't fight, I can't help you guys, but in the very least, I am here. I can" - Eiji gestured around him among Ash and Shorter, caught in the midst of a gang war, and struggled to find the word, projectiling it out with triumph like a watermelon seed during a spitting contest when he finally recalled - " bear witness to all of this." Eiji paused for a second, before looking at Ash. "That's the least I can do, plus I want to."
"'Bear witness'," Ash repeated, shaking his head. "You should never have been caught up in all of this."
"But I have and now I want to see through it to the end," Eiji said, sitting up to his full height. He didn't want to argue with Ash about this, they had done so many times already, but he would, if he had to, but Ash merely nodded.
"Bear witness to me then, Eiji," he said. "Because if there is one person who deserve to get out of this whole mess alive, it's you, and I won't let anything happen to you."
Eiji smiled and finally laid down on his own bed, choosing to see those words as Ash's affection towards him instead of Ash's little worth of himself, muscles relaxing as his body curled in Ash's direction.
That would have to be a battle for another day.
He closed his eyes. "Thank you, Ash."
"I should be saying that to you," Eiji thought Ash might had said, but Eiji was already drifting off under the steady protective weight of his eyes.