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Izumo isn’t the idyl that Ash has built up in his head.
He doesn’t live here with Eiji—they’ve got an apartment and a dog and a whole shelf of potted plants back in Tokyo—but here he is, sat by the hooded veranda with a cup of oolong whilst Eiji potters around in his family home, younger sister proclaiming superiority over the recipe whilst Eiji’s mother laughs in the background, Eiji’s father smiles behind his newspaper with his dog napping by his feet.
They insisted on having Ash and Eiji “over for the holidays”, as much as that means here in Japan. They don’t really celebrate Christmas—not like back home, with an exuberant amount of food that lasts for days after until the beef gets tough, no—it’s more of a lover’s holiday, Eiji explained the first year he was here.
They eat KFC and strawberry cake.
What a country.
And now here he is in Izumo, whilst the love of his life insists he knows how to baste a turkey (he squawks at his sister like one, at least), and Ash is content on smiling behind his cup, a blanket thrown over his shoulders.
Eiji’s family insisted on throwing an American Christmas, just because.
Just because. That’s a fucking miracle.
(Shorter had him over Christmas day, once. He and Nadia crammed him in at their tiny apartment table, leftovers from the restaurant at three in the morning. It was the only time Ash was snatched away from Dino’s extravagant celebrations, and it’s the only Christmas since before-Griff that he bothered to count as a holiday worth celebrating until Eiji.
He’s still got that stupid pair of American flag sunglasses Shorter gifted him.
Stupid bastard.
Why did you have to go—)
“You are thinking deeply, Aslan.”
Ash looks up from his cup; the tea’s too cold now, and Takashi Okumura stands by an empty flowerpot, looking down at him from his red-framed spectacles.
A shrug follows, but he smiles. “Remembering old friends.”
“I see.” He folds his newspaper up. “Good memories?”
Ash sips his tea. “All that’s worth remembering right now.”
Takashi Okumura is a man of few words, but his English is better than the rest of his family. Ash once remarked that the two things his parents worked as—a translator and nurse respectively—were the two things Eiji was terrible at when he came to America.
Eiji had huffed at him and jabbed the cotton wool a little too hard into his bullet graze. Asshole.
Ash likes sitting with Takashi and just reading, if Eiji’s visiting friends in the area and Ash elects not to go with. Another thing that amazes him about this goddamned family; he can sit around a grown man and not feel his skin crawl. He’s not had that since Max.
He knocks back the cold tea regardless. It still tastes good.
“Ah,” Takashi hums to himself, watching his ex-wife seemingly search for something and shaking her head. “It seems like we’re out of cooking apples. We need them for the pie.”
Pie? What the fuck? Are they really going all out?
“It is not my fault!” Eiji’s little sister—Kaori—blusters. “Definitely not a fault of mine!”
“You were trying to practice baking it before Ash came, weren’t you. Replace what you use, Kaori.”
Kaori’s face contorts into a scowl. “Hush, Eiji.”
“I will go and buy some. You stay here, brat,” Eiji rolls his eyes and ducks his sister out of the way with a hand on her forehead—she yelps and bats it away—before shrugging his coat on. “Ash, do you want to come with me?”
“Sure.”
It’s almost funny, in its way, as they toe into their sneakers and bundle up for the cold. Eiji’s mother—Kagura, she insists on being called, for the sake of familiarity—she’s fussing over Eiji and Ash’s scarves as if this is a thing she’s done for years, as if she didn’t scowl at him for six months over her son coming home in a wheelchair.
As if he wouldn’t have broken Eiji’s heart by never coming for him at all.
(Because now he feels like he’s back in a Cape Cod winter, with Griffin barely being in high school and giving him coins for the local corner store to get some candy, a drink, fruit, whatever Griffin could think of.
He never knew why Griffin couldn’t lift him after those corner store visits.
It was always a guise for when Jim hit the bottle.)
Little fetch-quests. But there’s no ulterior motive.
It’s just to get cooking apples.
Soon they’re out the door, where the cold clings to their breath in foggy little wisps, careful not to slip on the frosty paths that Eiji knows like the back of his hand. At one point he tugs Ash and grins and says, “here, this way,” as if he has to ask, as if Ash wouldn’t follow him anywhere almost two years into this thing they have.
And that’s another thing that’s just… them.
Eiji holds his hand everywhere.
It’s not the same, covered in these wool gloves Max sent over last Christmas, but their fingers lace together, Eiji brushes his thumb over his knuckles, and it just is. He tightens when they near a road, loosens it when they get a little sweaty, but never once comes close to letting go.
“You could skate down these paths with your eyes closed, huh,” Ash notes, Eiji leading the way down a little side-street.
“Mm, probably,” and the little shit that he is has no humility as he looks at Ash over his shoulder and shoots him a brilliantly white smile. “Not that it matters, much.”
“Huh? Is this just to excuse your bad memory, onii-chan? Are you getting on in years?”
“No,” Eiji just looks to the road ahead, and his other arm hooks around Ash’s elbow. “I just don’t mind getting lost with you.”
Oh.
Well.
Ash feels his cheeks heat up—goddammit, it’s been years!—and grumbles down at the ground like a stupid schoolboy in love.
“Oh! It’s been growing!”
Ash snaps out of his flustered reverie to see Eiji beaming at something. Ash turns his head, and there’s a tiny sapling, leaves frosted to make a green-to-white ombre, tied to a thicker stick rooted in the mud. “This an apple tree?”
“Yeah!” Eiji tugs Ash closer (closer, closer), until they’re pressed up against each other’s sides, and he’s not just beaming, he’s glowing. A firefly in winter. That’s his flyboy. “I think they planted it here after they cut the old one down. It’ll take years to get to the same height, but I’m glad it’s back!”
“You used to climb up it as a kid, right?”
“How did you—”
“Your Mom broke out the photo albums after you went to bed.”
Eiji sighs.
Ash laughs and breaks their little handhold to wrap an arm around his shoulders, and because they can’t stop touching, Eiji’s hands fly up to cover Ash’s arm. Ash and Eiji, now they're all locked together again, his nose brushes Eiji’s cheek, and he feels… he…
He feels.
“I almost broke my arm when I was thirteen. I was trying to tie a swing up there to impress a boy.”
Ash raises an eyebrow. “I didn’t take you for a daring Casanova.”
“I failed miserably. Also, he was straight.”
Ash glances back at the sapling. “You might make my heart skip a beat if you did a smaller swing. Then I could push you. Perfect size—”
And predictably, that earns Ash a huff, a batted hand, and a very courteous, “fuck you!” from the love of his life.
He’s feeling. It’s a torrent, a rush, a blinding light that lures him like a moth to a flame, but nothing about this will burn him alive. Ash just feels warm, with Eiji’s hands on his arm, with the cold fog hanging over the orange streetlights.
The frost tips the leaves, the dead flowers, the wooden fences; and this little sapling, it’ll grow into a world that’ll beat it down as many times as it uplifts it, and somehow, that’s going to be okay.
“…Ash?”
“Hm?”
“Do you like Izumo?”
Ash hums to himself, resting his chin on Eiji’s shoulder as he hugs him from behind. There’re people spying on them now, probably. Eiji’s never really cared for reputation, otherwise, he would have stayed smart and away from Ash.
At the beginning, Ash cared. Now he just trusts in Eiji. It’s going to be okay.
“Depends. Did you like Cape Cod?”
“That’s fair,” Eiji laughs, leans back against Ash. “I liked knowing where you began.”
“Then that’s my answer. Why do you ask?”
“Not sure,” Eiji sighs, and the breath curls around them both, pocketing them. “This place is old to me but new to you. I suppose I just wanted to know what it meant to you.”
“Hm.”
It’s not the same, not really, and they both know that. That Cape Cod was the end chapter for him, the start of another, birthed in blood and fire. That Cape Cod had the Bluebeard, had Griff leaving, had pumpkins and broken childhoods and baseball.
The only good thing about Cape Cod was Griff, and then Griff was cold, and Massachusetts was just another place on a map he had no sentimentality save for echoes of old memories soured by a depraved man’s bed.
Izumo had dysfunctional families and cheating mothers and a sick father, a snapped ankle into adulthood, but people cared enough to get Eiji through that. They both know it’s not the same. Not comparable in tragedies and recoveries.
They should be getting those cooking apples. Kagura gave them a brown paper bag to put them in. Doesn’t believe in plastic ones, they ruin the environment.
But then Eiji’s holding his hand out, and something soft-looking and white gently melts when it hits the black-dyed wool.
“It’s snowing,” Eiji breathes, eyes wide and wondrous. Like a little kid at Christmas—or maybe the magic of it never left him.
He doesn’t even celebrate it the way Ash would in America, the cheat.
“It hasn’t snowed all year,” Ash notes, hugging Eiji tighter to him. “Didn’t snow last year, either. D’you think it’ll settle?”
“I don’t know. But it’s beautiful, isn’t it?”
(Once, Skipper had dragged him out to the street at five in the morning and pointed at all the snow that hadn’t been touched by the street sweepers or everyday grime.
You can’t be a kid, not on these streets, so he drove him out, a little stretch aways from the criminal underbelly, and complained an hour later at the ice in his shoes as Skip jeered over his victory.
He wonders if there’s snow in heaven. Maybe Skip’s giving it to them due to all the excess.)
More pellets of snow begin to land on earth; their shoulders, the tops of fences, the sapling just shedding its frosty overcoat. It melts, at first, but then it comes in droves, and Ash calculates it’ll be soon when it blankets the entirety of the city.
Ash can’t remember the last time he saw snow, as he hugs Eiji to him as tight as he can.
Is snow beautiful?
Is—
Oh.
Oh, he remembers.
The further Eiji was from New York, the more the sun retreated, the more—the more it snowed. He couldn’t get that letter wet. Lao’s blood against the grey pavement as the snow barricaded only by his own body, hunched over.
Has to get the letter in the right order before his mind stops working.
(Has to stop any more blood from staining Eiji’s kind words.)
“Ash?”
Snow turns ashen when stained by the city’s grime.
“Ash—Ash, darling, what’s wrong?” Eiji turns in his arms, and—and oh, his face feels wet, Eiji takes off a glove and wipes Ash’s wet cheeks, then palms them. “Why are you crying?”
At first, words don’t come. He reads, reads so many words, but rarely can he say the right thing. All he could do at the end was say Eiji, Eiji, Eiji. His own personal mantra.
The snow falls. So does Ash’s ability to speak.
He just leans into Eiji’s hands, opens his eyes, feels how wet his lashes are. Eiji, oh Eiji, he’s gazing up at Ash with those big, honey-glazed eyes, all shiny and concerned with that cute little knot in his brow. But he doesn’t speak, he’s waiting for Ash.
When Ash doesn’t, he understands anyway and presses their foreheads together.
“It’s okay, Ash,” he says as one would to a child. (Griffin did, with their pinkies hooked together.) “It’s okay. I’m right here. Take your time.”
Ash keeps bracketing the memories that threaten to spill over.
Why can’t he just remember them properly, in this narrative he’s now writing for himself?
(He’s scared.
“It’s okay, Ash.”
But is it? Why does he keep relegating all those he loved to his innermost thoughts, like they’re a shameful secret, just like his past? Why—)
“Ssh…” Eiji’s stroking his hair.
Ash bursts into tears and hides his face in Eiji’s shoulder, crouches down so Eiji can wrap his arms around him. They’re not careful, they could slip on the ice.
But Eiji keeps them both steady.
The snow fell that one day, when Eiji grew more and more distant, and all Ash had left was his words. Now he has Eiji, he has Eiji, Eiji’s right here, and that means—that means—that means the snow doesn’t have to be him climbing up the mountain—
Now he can look over the cliff face and see the world.
“Did I ever—”
And he stops himself.
Eiji carries that thread with a gentle, “yes?”
“Did I ever tell you—” And his voice is so rough. “About—about when I stayed with Shorter and Nadia for the first Christmas right after I got out of juvie?”
“I don’t believe so, no. Do you want to tell me?”
“I—yes.” He breathes, shaky, and Eiji wipes his eyes the second Ash lifts his head. “Yeah, I think I want to. We’ve… got time before we have to head back, right?”
Eiji smiles—fuck, that smile could stop an armada—that big, beautiful smile, the one that lifts his cheeks and makes his eyes sparkle. “I know a longer way around to the corner store, and it’s open for another hour.”
“Your family?”
“They can wait.”
Ash sniffs, once more as Eiji wipes his eyes. Brushes his fingers against his skin. There’s a ring on his finger that Ash put there, promising forever.
Eiji doesn’t hold his hand. He wraps an arm around his back.
It’s snowing, but Ash isn’t staggering to the library as they take that first step. He’s opening his mouth to tell a story. They’re killing time until they head back to the Okumura household and share terrible apple-pie, watch Eiji’s sister get drunk off of sake, and fall asleep on the same futon curled up in each other’s arms.
It’s snowing, in Izumo, and Ash wonders if New York’s catching the light off of that blanket of white, too.