Light Up
By Kay
Disclaimer: I don't own Banana Fish. Thank heavens. I would utterly ruin it. :P (Also don't own the gorgeous lyrics to "Run," which is, like, the greatest song ever to fit into the Banana Fish ideal.)
Author's Notes: Slight spoilers for end of manga, but nothing too obvious, I thiiiiink. Sorry for the drama. You know me, I can never stop when there could be one more subtle and tragic moment! Bwahahahaa! Ahem. Yes. Right then. Enjoy.
Light up, light up
As if you have a choice
Even if you cannot hear my voice
I'll be right beside you, dear
Louder, louder
And we'll run for our lives
I can hardly speak, I understand
What you can't raise your voice to say
-- "Run," Snow Patrol
The last time Eiji touches the sun, he is burned.
It hadn't been so terribly an injury, though even now, on days when the air is thickly baked and rests heavily on his muscles, he feels phantom pains lingering behind. They bring back memories he'd rather forget sometimes, but in other ways remind him of an old friend. If he inhales just right, Eiji can almost taste the familiar scent of fresh grass, slick sneakers and sweat. 'We're still waiting for you,' it seems to say, but he's already grown used to reaching for the sky at a distance.
He never jumps again. Not like before, when he knew how to fly.
Ash taps the top of his Cola can three times with his fingernail before he opens it. "Old trick," he explains off-hand to Eiji, who is even more puzzled than ever but unwilling to show it. They are sitting at the kitchen table and eating the scattered remains of yesterday's lunch, ignoring the cars screeching outside and the clock on the wall that announces, in the dim corner of the room, that it's three in the morning.
Eiji is drinking soda, as well, because he's hidden the beer in the hallway closet.
Ash knows where it is. He always does, but never says anything, and it continues on the nights when he comes home and burns his coat rather than let Eiji try to wash out all the blood in the next laundry batch. When he drags his footsteps, belying the sharp glint of fury in his eyes-- this is when Eiji quietly, understandingly hides the liquor, because false suits of armor don't protect against arrows.
The window blinds are closed; they are locked up together in this world. That is what Eiji thinks, at least, with a soft smile for the man across the table.
The thunderstorms don't come often in New York, but when they do, Eiji buys a black umbrella from the downstairs grocery mart.
"I don't think it's going to help," Ash says dryly, but takes it with him. It probably doesn't look good for the leader of the gang to use an umbrella because of a little rain, Eiji later reflects anxiously, folding clothes up and arranging them in the dresser drawers. Ash's cashmere sweater has a hole in the sleeve. Eiji hopes Ash can buy a new one, because he certainly can't afford it. 'Even gang members need umbrellas,' he says to himself firmly, folding the sweater so that the gaping rip is tucked inside and won't be noticed for at least a week.
That night, Ash comes back holding its mangled frame, soaking wet from his sneakers to the faint, sheepish grin across his face. Eiji meets him at the door and laughs, asking why he even bothered to bring it back.
Ash shrugs. "I don't know. Can you put some coffee on?"
Eiji already has.
They argue over the paper in the morning, or at least when Ash is awake enough to be coherent. Eiji takes to cutting the most interesting articles out-- something that irritates Ash to no end, because it usually means there will be a jagged hole in the stock quotes for the day unless he gets to them first. Most of the articles are tucked safely inside books for later, and sometimes Ash will open a magazine for idle reading and three scraps of newspaper will fall into his lap.
"Why these?" he'll ask, shuffling through them critically. A boy has been saved from drowning in the harbor. A woman is robbed in a gas station, though only of her jewelry. A park is opening an art exhibit in sculpture.
Eiji plucks them from his fingers, scowling. "Current events are important. How else I remember them? Maybe someday I look and cannot find memory of being here. Maybe someday I want proof of existence."
Ash doesn't understand.
"It like pictures," Eiji tells him earnestly, but can't find the words to show it.
Ash is suffocating.
There's a hard, ugly ball of lead growing thicker with every second in his stomach, spreading out and moving his internal organs to the side of his ribs. It squeezes the breath out of his lungs, presses demandingly against his heart, and when Ash tries to open his eyes, the world is nothing more than a glare of gray and white.
The alleyway is wet against his hands, rough on his back. Ash thinks for a second that is stretched into months that this is no way to live, and then begins to cough out the sounds that can't be sobs.
Two bullets left in his gun. He would have to reload soon. They run out so quickly, Ash thinks dully, and wishes he could burn the thought from his brain and find a world where it doesn't exist at all.
Eiji buys a calendar. He writes out all the important things, like his birthday and Ash's, and various holidays and festivals in Japan that he wouldn't see. He draws a big pumpkin on the square for Halloween, chuckling under his breath, and sometimes Ash looks at it and sees kanji traced over days that are otherwise meaningless. He doesn't ask what they mean, and Eiji doesn't tell.
When he finishes the year, Eiji throws it away. That same night, Ash passes it and pauses, seeing the corner peek out of the trash can. He doesn't think about it; simply unfolds it again and tucks it under his arm, then quietly continues on to bed.
Somewhere in the time they spend together, Eiji learns how to leave novels laying around the house in small stacks instead of trying to put them away. ("I have a system," Ash claims in irritation, shuffling them around, "and you're messing it up.") He learns exactly how far he can push Ash's eating habits, and even better, how close he can bring them to his own. Somewhere in the midst of all their dancing, they manage to learn each other's steps perfectly, breezing through mornings and meals.
Eiji keeps one eye open at night in case of bad dreams now. They don't always come-- he thinks sometimes, silently, that Ash sees them too often in the day to be burdened at night, as well-- but he can't bring himself to loose guard. The nights he spends with his breath low and even, fingers pressed tightly into white-knuckled spears against the blankets, are always worth it if he can chase away the specters of Ash's nightmares.
Ash learns to smile without cracking.
Hovering beneath the surface, always, is the danger. They can't bring themselves to forget it, but even Ash can't resist the lure of the illusion.
"I am horrible at folding paper crane," Eiji muses conversationally, pouring a mug of coffee on the kitchen counter.
"Why would you want to fold a paper crane in the first place?" Ash asks, calmly snapping the newspaper back as he turns another page. "Goddamn it. You took a chunk out of the Williams article."
"I don't know. I just wish I could do it," Eiji admits, sitting down to join him at the table.
Most of the time, Eiji is alright. He takes everything Ash offers in his awkward, clumsy manner of friendship, and returns it in equally fumbling gestures that bring smiles or, even less often, comprehension. For him, this is more than enough-- to be here with Ash, to support him as much as possible, to soothe the strain of the beast that lingers beneath Ash's tense muscles.
Sometimes, however, Eiji finds that he wants.
He doesn't know how to put it into words. There are no sounds for this feeling-- an engrossing, disturbing lodge of disappointment, confusion, and all-encompassing desperation that rests in the pit of his stomach. He can't voice it, find a reason for it, or even predict when it will swell in his belly like a petulant child refusing to be ignored, but he finds relief in nothing when it happens.
It aches, it bites, this swollen emotion.
Because all Eiji can understand in these moments, caught up in a gut-wrenching suffering, is that he wants. He doesn't know what it is, if it's anything, or even more than just one thing-- but he wants, so much he wants, and it's everything to do with the crinkle of Ash's eyes when he laughs, or the bitter taste of an empty dinner table, or the thought of one day packing up the suitcase he abandoned in the closet and never seeing the smog-filled sky of this city ever again.
And it hurts like nothing else, this want, that Eiji curls up and nurses without even understanding its cause.
Ash thinks about buying birthday candles. He sees them in a seedy gas station, halfway between the cashier's counter and the back freezers where he'd grabbed a soda-- they are in a grimy, crinkled package on the clearance rack.
"Boss?" Bones asks, somewhere behind his elbow.
Twenty in a pack is more than enough. There will be two extra, Ash thinks, and then feels sick at the thought. What had he been thinking?
He jerks his head away, and goes to pay for his Cola. He's remembering something about Griffin and him, back when they were kids, and candles were striped things blown out and licked clean of frosting.
Eiji hangs up his developed photos across stretches of string in the closet he took for a dark room. Most of the time, it is pitch black and quiet, and Ash doesn't go near it because truthfully-- no matter how he justifies it-- having Eiji take all those pictures is little more than a distraction and ruse to keep the foreign youth from feeling helpless. As long as Eiji believes he is helping, and especially when it turns out he does, then everything will be fine.
Ash enters only once, wrinkling his nose at the scent of developing fluids. He wipes his sleeve across his face, breathing in the fabric to muffle it all out, and fumbles for the light switch with the free hand.
There are men who come out of buildings, suspects, travelers, and general snapshots of the outside world. There are frozen moments with the gang-- Kone's booming laughter, Bones' sneaky and gap-filled grin, and the dismay on Alex's face when he's given a bad assignment.
Ash's face paints the walls, as well, and he studies each one quietly for a while before moving on. It surprises him, though, this carousel of smiles-- he's never seen his own, having haunted too many mirrors, and can't remember where they came from at all.
"In Japan, it normal to take off shoes in house," Eiji says pointedly, wiggling his toes against his socks. They dig into the plush carpet.
Ash pauses. He's haggard, worn through to even the dry-cake of his bones, and for a moment can only stare at the man calmly surveying him over the cover of a book. He looks as though he wants to say something, but instead obediently toes off the mud-caked boots and propels them into the hallway beyond. Eiji can hear them hit the wall with a disturbingly loud smack.
"I'm back," Ash mutters, and falls onto the couch. His head rests inches away from the warmth of Eiji's thigh, and the pathway from Eiji's hand to the golden tips of his hair is a short one.
"Welcome home," Eiji murmurs, and strokes.
"Do you ever think about if…?"
"Not really," Ash lies, and pushes the softness of Eiji's shoulder away from where it naturally fits next to his own.
In the darkness, Eiji's eyes are pools of nothingness. He does not lean close again, not to touch or plead, but merely waits.
Ash has always known exactly what he wants-- it's knowing he won't get it that makes him how he is, because he's smart enough to understand the truth. Fantasies and wishes are the tools of innocents.
It stings sometimes, that's all. Like someone digging a needle into the junction between his thumb and finger, a splinter that refuses to be removed. When Eiji smiles at him just like that, telling him to have a good day as if they are only hours and normal jobs away from each other until the night they'll reunite. Like he's walking to a firm where he'll make jib remarks to coworkers who hate him for looking good in a tie-- or to the grocery store, cursing because they've run out of vegetables and damned Japanese food isn't complete without it. Like they're people who are just people, and their world is just the world.
He thinks about waking up each day with nothing to worry about except whether or not they've paid the electric bill.
Eiji gives him a taste of this, and now his teeth ache for it. It's such a mundane thing to want, Ash thinks bitterly as he bites down, and swirls the blood against his gums like a fine wine.
It rains well into Tuesday, and Eiji restocks the refrigerator.
It's so gray outside, like a curtain of cobwebs have trailed from the heavens and fallen down to earth. He reads for a while, but finds his eyelids slipping shut too often to justify it. The clock is muffled and quiet; he barely hears the hours pass.
He wonders where Ash is now.
It isn't until the front door closes with a quiet click, and Eiji starts from the sound, that he realizes he hasn't smiled the entire day. The corners of his mouth hurt from forced stretching, and he can't see through the blurred shutters over his eyes what Ash's face looks like this gray-draped afternoon.
The world swings gently back into place, however; it doesn't matter.
The last time Eiji touches the sun, he is burned.
He has nothing to show for it. A suitcase full of photographs, tiny memories framed and smudged by his fingerprints too many times to count. There are no visible scars; thanks to Ash, a blade has never touched him, and in a few years, Eiji will no longer recall the taste of a hot dog with onion, the cool spray of the ocean, or the feel of the frayed hem of Ash's favorite jacket. Everything that is torn remains on the inside, tucked far away, deep, for Eiji to take out when no one can see except himself.
He never loves again. Not like before, when he knew Ash.
End