Sometimes, Izana dreams, and in dreaming, reality evaporates in sweet-smelling tendrils of smoke curling in the air around him. For a moment, everything is perfect.
July 17th, 2000, Black Dragon territory, Tokyo.
19h32
There's a song playing on Shin's old radio. A girl sings about rejection, and Izana thinks it must be the most benign of salvation. There is serenity in certainty, and what is more certain than abandonment? The beat drops slightly and Izana feels a tremor run down his spine as the air thickens in anticipation.
Shin sings along, a cigarette hanging from his lips, his voice something raw and heady that makes Izana's guts coil in want and revulsion. He knows the words, and Izana listens to the fumbling harmony of twined voices hollowly echoing against his skull.
Izana thinks about the girl who sings about rejection, and it's sad in a way that reminds him of the songs Emma's mother used to sing, making his guts clench uselessly as he presses a closed fist against his ribs in hopes to alleviate the pressure in his chest. Shin looks at him from up above through black lashes and smiles. Izana inhales sharply.
"Hey Shin, can I stay here a little longer?" he asks and Shin hums in agreement, his fingers beating the rhythm of the song they're listening to on the window frame. The harmonics rise and fall hypnotically, and he looks outside. Somewhere in the distance, he hears a bang followed by a string of curses.
There isn't much to see outside through Shin's dirty window, but he thinks the sky looks pretty at dusk, although it cannot really compare with the ocean at sunset. He wants to go to the beach again with Shin, but Shin is busy these days, so he probably wouldn't have time. He can only cherish all the more the brief time they get to spend together. Izana looks over his shoulder and Shin is slowly swaying on the ball of his feet, dark lashes brushing over his cheekbones, fully entranced by the song playing on the radio.
"I know you don't like it here," Shin says quietly after a beat, eyes closed, speaking slowly over the throbbing bass and the hiss of the girl's guitar. "Are you lonely?"
Izana busies himself fiddling with the hem of his shirt. "I don't know. I don't think I am, no," he says unconvinced as he pulls at a fraying thread. Something clicks and Shin's eyes widen in alarm. "Did you know, my friend's counselor in juvie told him there was something wrong with me?," he pauses, "Rin told me," Izana adds, but he realizes belatedly that Shin has never met any of his friends, so he can't imagine Rin's howling laughter or Ran's exasperated expression as he recounted the event.
"They were talking about how we all met in juvie and stuck together. The shrink said he should meet other people as well, and that our relationship is unhealthy. That we're bad for each other". His tone is solemn and Shin looks at him worriedly but says nothing.
"Mucho punched him. I don't think his shrink pressed charges but Mucho got into a stupid lot of trouble for that. His sentence was prolonged anyway," Izana adds almost airily. "Didn't even break his nose," Shin snorts at that and shakes his head like he always does.
"He's not wrong," he counters flatly, but his eyes are crinkling in amusement. "I know a thing or two about unhealthy attachment, you know," he drawls, "I'm sure his therapist meant well," Shin adds lightly as an afterthought, but Izana feels his stomach drop again.
He closes his eyes and the world turns black and his thoughts begin to stray. He morbidly wonders what color are his insides now, how good they'd look spilled out on the street for the world to see.
Izana has seen before what a man's intestines look like when they've been gutted like a fish. It had been an accident, really. He hadn't meant to kill the man but the man attacked first and he still had Ran's hunting knife tucked in his sleeve. He had stabbed him on reflex, and he had been surprised by how easy it was to cut someone open with such a small blade.
Izana imagines his insides would be a reflection of his outsides: sickly gray and coarse, awkwardly patched up and still falling apart at the seams.
(Izana was 15 the first time he killed a man and it was an accident. He stabbed him in panic and the knife had ripped out and cut open his belly. He can never forget the look on his face as he watched his guts spill out. It had been pretty, thick cords of pearly gray and baby pink soft flesh, musty, stinking, feverishly twitching, smooth and steaming hot. Izana had been horrified for a moment and then the man had died and it was like nothing happened)
He had left before anyone could realize what went down. Mucho, who hadn't been far from the scene had dragged Izana away from the corpse he made by his blood-red sleeves and he had hurriedly wiped the tears from his eyes. It was an accident, he truly did not mean to kill that man, but it did not make him any less of a murderer in the end.
He dreams of seeing Shin in the distance, but his worried expression is not enough to snap him back into focus. Izana thinks he does that often. He forgets about the world around him, lost in thoughts.
Izana thinks about the man he killed by accident, but with little remorse, as a child. He wonders when it happened. How it happened. That was after he had met Shin, after he went to juvie and met Mucho, Shion, and the Haitanis.
They've always had an understanding, the boys and him. Or maybe they understood him in the only way that didn't make Izana's skin crawls.
A voice pierces the darkness. He hears Shin singing about a girl who wants to die with a bright smile on his lips, and it takes little for Izana to decide that this must be love and that he loves him.
He wipes the sweat on his forehead with his sleeve, careful to hide from Shin the silver of pinkened puckered skin on his wrists that could be briefly uncovered.
Shinichiro leans on the window rail and exhales black clouds of smoke. His hair is sticking to his forehead, and his shirt is drenched with sweat. The heat accumulated throughout the day is quickly becoming unbearable. The air is damp and stinks of old tobacco, weed, oil, and underneath it all, he can faintly smell wafts of Shin's awful deodorant.
Izana chokes on air and he thinks it must be what drowning feels like. He looks at Shin who's covered in oil and grease but is otherwise unperturbed and Izana wonders where he's been, but it doesn't really matter because if there is a Hell, and there surely is, Izana decides, then Shin must have never seen it. The atmosphere shifts and silence envelops them so Izana momentarily drifts away.
The world comes back into focus, and Izana sees Shin absently running his fingers on the cold dead wood of his window still. He's looking in the distance, eyes ablaze pinned on the setting sun. The air outside is blurred with heat. His black eyes gleam like burnished copper in the right light, the pupil undistinguished from the irises.
It is in these moments that Shin looks most serene when he is wrapped in darkness and burning light claws at his skin. It pulls at him like a magnet, a morbid attraction for desecration and corruption. It calls to unseen forces tugging at his core, unrelenting. Izana thinks of sweet surrender, but the mere idea contradicts what he knows of Shin because Shin would not be Shin if he were able to give up on his most cherished delusions, the indomitable will to live up to his dream.
Izana never allowed himself to succumb to the desire to be saved either, but if he did, he would certainly feel like salvation. Shin embodied the idea of the salvation of man, something monsters like them most certainly did not deserve (deep down, Izana knew, Shin loved him like war, like he was a battle to be won).
"What are you thinking about ?" Izana asks breathlessly, eyes glazing over. Will you ever leave me as everyone else did? Why can't I be a real part of your family? He really means to say, but the words die on his lips. Shin locks eyes with him and he thinks he can see through his insecurities. He smiles widely, and Izana's breath hitches. Shin rubs his arm and his heartbeat slowly settles.
"Nothing important" he grins sheepishly "got lost in thoughts watching the sunset. It's pretty," he admits scratching the back of his head like he always does when he's embarrassed.
"It is" Izana adds too quickly, and it takes much of his self-control not to reach out for him, run his fingers along the curve of his arms. Something burns black in the pit of his stomach. He wants to leave this place, disappear without a trace and take Shin with him. It wouldn't matter what they'd do. But as much as he knows that the sun rises and sets, Izana knows Shin wouldn't ever leave his other family and the boys who gave him the black embroidered coat sleeping in his closet at home, coiling dragons of silver thread on rough dark cotton, a silent promise to the future that is both a curse and a blessing, Izana thinks.
"Now, what are you thinking about?" Shin asks teasingly, ruffling his hair. Izana's heartbeat picks up again, like war drums.
"Nothing much. You're right. I just don't think I like it here." Shin raises an eyebrow "I'd like to live by the sea." Izana adds hesitantly. "But I don't want to be too far from you. Yokohama is the nearest option, but it's still a little far from here", he continues slowly. Shin hums.
"Well, for starters, you know I think you're too young to be living on your own already" He pauses, looking at Izana contemplatively "Besides, your situation in itself is a little… peculiar. It would be nice if you had a semblance of stability in your life." What a fucking understatement, Izana thinks grimly. Shin seems to be considering what to say. "I like that you're now living close enough that I can see you every day," he says with a closed-eye smile. Izana grits his teeth. "But if you really hate it here, I can help you look into a new place, somewhere you like better" he finishes lamely.
The sun is hanging low in the sky, slowly, steadily sinking below the skyline of Tokyo, and Izana both dreads and morbidly anticipates the moment Shin will go back to his grandfather and his real siblings, close their golden parenthesis at the bike shop and he will have to go back to his gloomy flat with the chaos of his thoughts for sole company.
With a low sigh, Shin closes the window and retreats back to the old torn couch occupying the corner of his workshop and lies down heavily, his long legs hanging limply from the side. A single ray of sun hits his face and his skin flares in shades of golden red. Izana turns from the window and sits down on the floor by his side to bask in the muted light of the blood orange evening sun, counting clouds of gilded dust suspended in the air. Shin takes his lighter from his pocket, lights a cigarette, and starts languidly smoking, eyes half-closed and lost in thoughts. He drops the lighter to the floor and sighs in contentment.
He always looks so peaceful and quiet in these moments and Izana could never understand for the life of him how he could stand to be so still. To Izana, for whom everything went too fast in the most unpredictable of directions, whose inner thoughts constantly ate at him with vengeance, Shin's calm and steady presence felt out of touch with reality.
"Would you like to meet Manjiro and Emma?" Shin suddenly asks.
The question is both unexpected and unsettling. Izana momentarily struggles to light his own cigarette, his thoughts uncontrollably derailing with the all too familiar onset of a panic attack. Tears prick at the corner of his eyes, and he wipes at it angrily. He does not want to cry in front of him.
As if he had heard his thoughts, Shin sits up and looks at him worriedly. Izana slouches, hugging his legs to himself, and picks up his brother's lighter with trembling hands. He runs his fingers on the sides of the lighter taking note of the bumps on its surface. After a long exhale, he pauses, pointedly avoiding meeting Shin's eyes.
"You ok there?" Shin asks worriedly, Izana lets go of a breath he had not realized he was holding, and for a brief, fleeting moment, the weight of the world lifts from his shoulders before crashing back down unto his back again.
"I'm fine. Peachy" Izana chokes out, willing himself to breathe. "Just tired" He adds after a long pause, taking a deep drag from his cigarette, slowly exhaling. Izana buries his face between his knees and inhales deeply. The concentration of smoke caged between his chest and legs brings fresh tears to his eyes.
With an exasperated sigh, Shin grabs his elbow to untangle his form. Thick swirls of gray smoke slowly rise in the air like coiling snakes. Izana digs his nose into his sleeve to take in the pungent scent of ashes and tobacco.
"Oh my god, don't do that," he chides him softly and Izana cringes. "It's bad enough you're already smoking 'cause of me. I'm a terrible influence on you" Shin adds dejectedly. "I swear you're repeating all of my mistakes, " he pauses. "Please don't get into a gang yet" Shin bemoans.
"Would it be bad? You were in a gang and you're doing well, aren't you?" Izana asks curiously, peeking at him from behind his sleeves.
"That's not the question. Yea, I love what I do and what I have going on right now. The boys, the shop, the kids, everything. It's a life I chose, you know? Sometimes things go to shit, but it's ok. That's how life works. Stuff happens and in the end, things work out. But I don't think gang life would suit you as well as it suited me" Shin explains cryptically, waving his cigarette around.
"If you love your boys, why did you resign then? Why did you step down from your position as commander of the Black Dragons?" He asks slowly as if he were afraid of what the answer to his question might be. Did Shin grow tired of dealing with his band of misfits? Did he want to be normal, but got stuck with them anyway? If anyone he knew could pull off transitioning from gang leader to respectable citizen, that would be him. Try as he may, it was a universally acknowledged truth that Shin had no talent for violence.
"I wanted to build something that would feel like home for kids like you and me," Shin confesses, a dusting of soft pink coloring his cheeks.
"That's what I needed the most when I was your age: somewhere I could belong and more importantly somewhere I could be free to become the person I wanted to be" He pauses, locking eyes with Izana and looking at him with such tenderness he thought he'd forgotten how to breathe for a moment.
"I wanted to make the world we live in fairer to us, to get everyone to recognize our worth," Shin smiles again dreamily.
Shin shuffles on his feet and brings another cigarette to his lips pensively. The lighter clicks and the flame illuminates his face briefly, casting odd shadows on his cheeks. Izana itches to touch him.
"I wanted to protect my people. But I've come to understand that the world of adults is very different from what I had in mind when I was your age."
Shin gives him a sidelong glance and ignores the way Izana struggles to roll his own cigarette, balancing the paper on his forefinger and clumsily spraying on it a dusting of tobacco.
"I'm not giving up on my dream to usher a new area for delinquents, but I realize now there can be very many ways to do that, and that it can't be all that, " he says gently.
Shin smiles fondly at him and takes the half-rolled cigarette from his hands to redo the wrapping. Although Izana has only ever seen him smoke his stupid menthols, his technique is practiced and his gestures are almost graceful. Of course, he catches Izana's questioning look and shrugs.
"Waka only ever smokes rolled cigarettes, but he's actually super bad at rolling his own damn cigarettes. We used to practice together but he's never improved," he chuckles.
"It's cheaper to roll," Izana concedes "but I don't like it. I've always thought yours taste nicer". That was a lie, menthols taste like honeyed tar and suffocation, but they smell like Shin, and that was sweeter than anything in the world.
"You really shouldn't smoke at all, Izzy," Shin laments.
"Creating a gang with my friends felt right back then and I don't regret it at all. But now I gotta look farther into the future and think of what would make the most beneficial impact on the lives of the people I care the most about. I think kids like us, punks, and misfits need something to give us a sense of belonging, and that it's easy for us to go too far, too fast, and take paths of no return. I want to create a place for us to feel at home, to be safe and accepted when some have only ever known rejection and abandonment. I've never been too fond of violence and now I think I might have been wrong all along to think I could go anywhere doing the talking with my fists…" he concludes pensively, "Hehe, sorry for the rant little bro"
Izana looks at Shin questioningly. "you don't like violence because you're bad at it. Almost everyone is a better fighter than you" Izana accuses him half-heartedly, "But I'm better than everyone at fighting so people listen to me," that, or they quickly learn to obey, he thinks. "Why do you think I'm not fit to be in a gang?"
"I might be wrong. But it doesn't feel right for you, does it? You're my baby brother, so I want you to find your thing. I'll be there for you all the way, ok? But you have to live your life for yourself first, is what I mean. Find your own happiness, I guess." Shin shrugs, "I'm not gonna leave you, and I'll help you as much as I can along the way. but it has to come from you as well". He smiled brightly, with utter confidence.
"I… I don't know what I want" Izana admits. "I want to be with you. To be a real family someday. I want…" he chokes on air, unable to articulate his thoughts. Izana takes a long drag on his cigarette, stubbornly ignoring Shin's worried expression and the tears forming at the corner of his eyes.
"Nevermind. I fucking hate it here." he spits out, mortified by his own show of vulnerability. Shin had always had the terrifying ability to make him show weakness when he had spent his whole life pretending to be stronger than he was.
"Oh, Izzy…" Shin ruffles his hair and the familiarity of the gesture, the tenderness in his eyes is more than he can bear.
"Look, no matter what you think, you're not alone, and it won't always be like this, okay? You've gotta hold on and do your best. I'll be there to help you on the way" Shin smiles at him, and it takes everything from Izana not to grab his hand because he knows he would never want to let it go.
"I won't pretend I know what I'm doing most of the time. But I'll do my best as well" He smiles roguishly. "I wish your life had been easier." He adds after a beat.
Shin takes a long drag on his cigarette and abruptly lies back down on the couch, exhaling skyward. Izana looks at the white tendrils of smoke curling in the air like incense, and the moment feels holy, "It's okay to struggle"
Izana lies back against the wall looking up through the window. The summer sky in Tokyo is devoid of stars, but it looks pretty anyway, like a blank canvas dipped in black ink.
Shin gives him his best impish smile "I wanna see where you'll be going from here, Izzy. I'll be cheering you on." Shin smiles warily "Nothing's really lost until we're dead, and it might not even really be the case in the end," he adds cryptically " So do what you want, Izana. Do what makes you happy. Love who you want. But you have to love someone because you can't be alone for the rest of your life. Even as people come and go, don't forget to love despite the hurt and the pain you might risk because it's always worth it in the end."
Izana feels his lips stretch into the barest hint of a smile. Shin lets out a short laugh and runs his hand into his own short black hair, relishing the feeling of the previous tension gone with Izana's timid smile.
"I don't need you, stupid" Izana huffs, absently putting out the cigarette on his wrist, "And I'd rather you don't die. I don't want you to die," Izana adds gravely, focused on the stinging pain of the cigarette burn.
"You fucking idiot" Shin sighs exasperatedly. "I have no idea what I'm going to do with you", he pauses, looking at Izana with more softness than he has ever experienced in his life, and Shin's softness drips like marrow into his bones until he can't breathe and the moment suffocates him, "But then, we'll just have to figure it out along the way, I guess…" Shin gives him a small smile, red lips pressed against sharp teeth, and a ray of darkness penetrates his heart. He sees -
Emptiness
Yet for a moment, breathing doesn't feel like drowning.
