.
.
Normal belongs to other people. It's not meant for someone like him.
Ash knows normal is considered subjective for an individual experience, but for his life… it seems like anything close to normal is him entering an old, grungy apartment in the dead of night, blood-flecked and silent as the Reaper himself. Jumping into bar-fights and running numbers and outwitting his enemies through hacking their accounts or shooting them point-blank in the temple.
But normal is also glimpsing at the Jack Daniel's whiskey bottles on the table, once emptied and now brimming with fake, brown-and-yellow felt sunflowers. It's sneaking into one of the locked-up indoor pools of the nearby university and racing whoever in his gang thinks they can beat Ash. It's him and Eiji scribbling cartoony faces onto pieces of notebook paper in the candlelight and taking selfies together, posing dramatically like kicking their legs up, clasping hands and linking their arms.
It's Eiji.
Eiji, who puts the stupid sunflowers in bottles and little, friendly notes in Ash's jean-pockets. Eiji, with his dark, shampoo-scented hair and gentle disposition, his brown eyes that go a little wide each time Ash brushes his mouth affectionately to Eiji's face. He wants the sensation of this over and over again, the slope of Eiji's jaw and neck, the thin, warm roundness of his cheek. Eiji's pale lips.
He wants Eiji to belong here with him. To stay in Ash's life without being in danger or getting tainted by Ash. But it's like chasing the wisps of a sweet, bright dream… it can't last forever.
(None of them ever do.)
While distracted on his laptop, Ash senses Eiji creeping up behind him. Probably with a maniacal look on his face. As if a damn person could sneak up on a person like Ash. The thing is Eiji has been made aware of Ash's sensitivity to the cold. It doesn't help that Eiji's fingers are always… that.
Ash braces himself subtly, hearing Eiji yell "gotcha!" with enthusiasm and press his entire freezing hand against Ash's nape peeking out his red tee-shirt. Instead of shrieking and jolting away, like Bones had when Eiji did this same prank only yesterday, Ash tilts his head backwards. He shuts his jade-green eyes and lets out an overly exaggerated but delirious groan, Ash's diaphragm rumbling.
He reopens his eyes, gazing to an upside down Eiji who appears between surprised and disappointed.
"That feels so nice," Ash mumbles, the corner of his mouth uplifting. Impish. He wastes no moment to touch over Eiji's hand and slide it over to his chest, dragging Eiji's fingers deep underneath his tee.
When he groans again, more softly and erotically, the other man flounders, pulling himself away.
Ash bursts out laughing, turning around to grin at Eiji putting his hands on his hips, frowning and reddening with embarrassment. He loves it — Eiji's brain must be short-circuiting like crazy. "What? C'mon, you offered!" Ash responds smugly to the eye-roll from his friend.
Friend — yeah, right.
They're interrupted by Ash's phone going off. He pretends to sigh, grabbing and answering.
"Yo?"
Static nothingness. "Max?" Ash tries again, double-checking the number quickly and listening again. It's definitely not one he's familiar with. "Max, you dumb fuck—quit screwin' around or I'm gonna—"
"Aslan?"
A tinny of a female voice. The humor drains slowly out of Ash's face until he's numbed out.
.
.
Silver maples and cherry birches grow beyond the dusty, open roads. Ash remembers growing up around the red baneberry and northern lady fern and pink corydalis in the fields. Sweetgrass and purple-stemmed angelica. It's some of the very few details about his childhood without any traumatic flashbacks.
The ocean glimmers on the horizon. Ash feels the truck he's been riding in for the past five and a half hours rattle to a halt and then pops open the passenger-side door, as Eiji wordlessly does the same.
Ivy hangs off the single-shutters to Ash's childhood home. Dirt and grime blackening the wood.
"ASHHHHHH!"
A boy leaps into view, racing full-speed down the gravel walkway.
It only takes a minute or so for Ash to recognize his voice, staring ahead in mounting disbelief. He feels himself moving forward, running a short distance before a loudly crying Skipper crashes bodily into Ash. Skipper's name bubbles out of Ash's lips, punctuated in short, heart-wrenching sobs. He lifts Skipper into his arms, whirling into a half-circle and releasing him as Skipper yells for their companion.
"EIJIII!"
He hears Eiji sobbing behind him, likely thrown backwards by the force of Skipper.
Ash barely inhales when he sees a taller, violet-haired figure leisurely approaching down the pathway.
"You look like hell, man," Shorter murmurs, his light brown eyes crinkling. He yanks his hands out of his jacket-pockets when Ash rushes in, hugging him desperately, burying his opening, gasping mouth into Shorter's shoulder. Jade-green eyes overflow with new, blindingly hot tears. "Shorter…"
"I know, Ash…" Ash trembles with the effort to keep standing, brows furrowing. "Mmm'here," Shorter tells him, leaning out and smiling so widely. His cone-piercing has gone missing. "It's real."
Ash doesn't know what to do and finds himself planting a messy, emotional kiss to Shorter's lips.
Shorter chuckles, going along with it and then breaking away, cradling the back of Ash's head and kissing his forehead sympathetically. While he's with Eiji and Skipper, Ash tunes them out, witnessing as Jennifer offers a tiny, encouraging look. He heard her voice on the other line, and yet, Ash couldn't believe it. He still can't. She's all pinned, brown hair and meadow-blue eyes like before. No glaring red blood trickling on her blouse.
"I'm so glad you're okay, honey…" Jennifer breathes out, enveloping him in the scent of ginger and honeysuckle. Her petite arms curling to Ash's neck. "When your dad passed on, I wanted to get in contact with you. I just didn't know how," she explains. "Then we found one of Max's contacts and…"
"We…?"
Ash's voice comes out raspy, hazed-out in the blur of his mental state.
Too much is happening. All at once.
She glances over to the porch where a lucid Griffin observes them, cheerfully waving.
Griffin.
He wrenches out of Jennifer's arms, shuddering violently and collapsing against his big brother shushing him in his ear. Ash sobs hard enough to feel dizzy, pushing his nose and snot-drying lips into Griffin's white tee, remaining there. Nothing else matters.
Nothing… nothing has made less, more sense than this.
.
.
"Skipper got here around the time I did," Griffin announces. He marches around their shared bedroom from when he was a teenager and Ash was only a kid dependent on him. "Badly hurt, too."
Ash shakes his head, hunching over one of the nursery chairs. His eyes feel impossibly swollen up.
"I don't understand… Griff, he was dead. And you…"
How can he be talking to him?
"None of his vitals were hit. Skipper pulled through." Griffin examines one of the portraits of Ash's softball team, wrinkling his nose. His sandy-blonde hair dampened. "They had to stage my death after getting shot to get me out of the city. They said I… I pulled myself out of Banana Fish's effects. Not gonna pretend I understand how that happened. The only person who knew you directly and mighta spilled the beans was Charlie, but he didn't." He places the silver-trimmed portrait onto the dresser, glass-down. "Your pal Shorter had the harder time recovering from his injuries. You ended up missing the heart anyway."
The memory of pulling a trigger to kill Shorter aches like a pinprick directly into Ash's own soul.
"I thought I saw his body…" he insists, almost frantically. "They were dissecting Shorter…"
"Maybe you only thought it was. Maybe they were working on another fresh corpse," Griffin offers up quietly. He rests a hand to Ash's head, mussing his yellow-blonde hair. "A lot of bad people were after you and me. But they've only wanted to come here the one time. That's fortunate for all of us."
Ash doesn't react to the familial gesture.
He thought Jennifer died of her bullet wounds too, but Ash guesses it had been their dad instead.
"I've missed you, kiddo." Griffin's smile is huge and full of life and light. Ash's lower lip quivers until he bites down. "You've been taking care of me this whole time when I should have been doing it for you. I realized who you were while drugged up… I wanna say I'm proud of you, Aslan."
The grandfather clock in the hall chimes. Ash wipes over his flushed, moistened eyelids, and then under his nose harshly, sniffling. From outside this bedroom window, Skipper tugs gleefully on Eiji's hand.
Griffin stares out, following Ash's eyes wandering over his friend.
His partner. His everything.
"Who's the lucky fella?"
"Eiji," Ash replies, never tearing his eyes away from Eiji, saying his name like it's precious.
"Treats you good?"
"I dunno who or where I would be without him."
Griffin's laughter booms out. "Well, I'll be damned," he says, smirking down on Ash and mussing his hair again playfully. "My baby brother fell in love, huh?"
Love.
Ash's gut clenches and then unclenches, filling with wondrous, irresistible heat.
He likes the sound of that.
.
.
Night looms over Cap Cod, darkening and blowing with powdery snow.
Ash sneaks into the guest-bedroom, peering over Eiji sitting up and yawning into his forearm. The lantern-light painting his face golden. "Hey," he mumbles, scooting over instinctively on the bed.
"Hey," Ash mumbles back, dropping into a sit next to Eiji as he peels off his dark blue V-neck. It feels like Eiji's gaze roves all the way down his naked, muscular torso. Ash snorts out, twisting his lips together in amusement and nothing about it. "It still feels like I'm dreaming…"
"Me too." He peers up to Eiji standing, pulling off his khakis and socks. Now he's being the voyeur, hungrily taking in the view of Eiji's tan, sinewy chest. "But they're here, Ash. So are we."
"… Where's the space-heater?"
"I gave it to Shorter and Skipper in the living room. Figured we wouldn't need it that badly."
"Think so?" Ash points out, intrigued as Eiji suddenly grins mischievously. He urges Eiji to settle in Ash's lap, having Eiji in only his lilac button-up and his boxers. "Gonna keep me warm yourself?"
"Mmhm…" Eiji hums out, his dark eyes half-mast.
He pushes his fingers over Ash's cheeks before their lips press earnestly, opening, sucking low, moaning kisses. Those cold fingers accompanied by Eiji's warmth on top of it has Ash gripping tighter onto him. They separate long enough to remove the last of their clothes, giggling into each other's mouths and throats, rolling onto the sheets, Ash's nails digging into one of Eiji's buttocks.
Eiji doesn't have to do this with him, grinding slowly to Ash's cock, holding fiercely onto him and whimpering out breathlessly when the orgasm hits, cum pulsing onto their stomachs in the dark.
Ash doesn't deserve normal.
But he is glad they have it together.
.
.
Banana Fish isn't mine. I REALLY NEED TO WRITE MORE FOR THESE BOYS. I LOVE THEM SO MUCH. Yeah so nobody died,,,,,, that's it that's all I got it's canon everybody Ash loves is okay! And that's all I really need in life! It's posting time for the Banana Fish Valentine's Day Exchange and I got sitical from Tumblr as my giftee! Very exciting! I hope very much that you like it! :) And you guys do too! Thanks! Please yes any comments/thoughts are encouraged!