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“Burning the midnight oil?”
Ash looks over his shoulder. “You could say that.”
New York’s a humbug in the residential areas, and so Max’s voice overlays the silence rather than breaks it. Just a minor discrepancy, a venture in mild discordant symphonies. He’s holding two beer cans—he’s since canned trying to tell Ash not to crack one open when stressed—and passes him one as he takes a seat on the porch next to him.
“Jess never thought she’d end up here permanently,” Max shares, taking a sip and sighing when it slides down his throat. “LA was always her calling.”
“I doubt she planned for a lot of this.”
Max snorts behind his can. “No argument here. But she’s happy enough.”
“And you?”
“I’m over the moon she’s even with me again. Hard to find anything to complain about.” A beat. Fingernails scrape against the metal. “Maybe she could tone down on the gloating about being a better fighter than a vet .”
Ash nurses the unopened can in his hand, thumb trailing around the rim. It’s cold, seeps through his fingers and thin jacket. Taps on it a few times, presses his thumb until the skin turns white.
“Eiji tells me you went to see your old man.”
No beating around the bush, then. Max is like that: blunt and honest, even if it gets him into trouble. Ash sighs, and opens the can to down a quarter of it in one go. “Yeah, I did,” he says, wiping his mouth with his sleeve. “Turns out he survived the gunshot that night.”
“You don’t feel good about that?”
Out of everyone on that night, he had to be the ghost that still drew breath. Everyone I loved from before-Eiji is dead. Skip, Griff, Jennifer, Shorter . His heart twists that there’s a list now.
Ash shrugs instead. “It is what it is.”
“That doesn’t mean you have to feel good about it. It’s alright.”
Hah , he laughs internally, outwardly he just rolls his eyes, watches the conversation die. Max, giving him advice on handling emotions? That’s rich. Guy’s been divorced for lack of transparency. Projection, much? Under this open, starry sky, he could howl with laughter.
Cats don’t bark at the moon, though. They just stare until the light’s blinding those glowing eyes of theirs.
“Ash?”
Yeah. He could laugh. Laugh right into this open air that smells like smoke and trees. Eiji always likes that scent clinging to his shirt. Eiji likes a lot of things about him, and Max—
Max is looking at him expectantly, but not demanding, and it strikes Ash that he’s sitting alone with an older man who’s offered him alcohol, and he doesn’t feel his skin crawling or the taste of bile at the back of his throat.
… Oh .
Maybe this was what Eiji was talking about, this… unfurling of his. Maybe this is what trust can be. Maybe trust isn’t just Eiji, or Shorter, Skip or Nadia. Maybe it can be a concept, rather than traits of just the few people he lets in.
“We talked, for a while.”
“Yeah?”
It’s too much at once—Ash ditches the alcohol for a pack of cigarettes tucked into his pocket. He’s been trying to kick the habit, especially since Eiji picked it up too, but he’s allowing himself this cheat. Max hands him a lighter, and then the end is cherry red, a poppy against velvet, and he wonders if Griffin saw the same sky crammed into that foxhole, the fires of cigarettes covering up the burning of No-Man’s land.
On the exhale, Ash speaks again, holding that cigarette daintily between his fingertips. The tip turns cherry, on fire, until it falls into an ashy heap on the floor. Almost like snow, marred grey by the city. “Did you know there’s a cracked vase in the corner of that house?”
Max stays silent. Shakes his head.
“We’ve got this cracked vase. Gaudy thing, some ocean women’s tits are the centrepiece. I broke it back when Griff still lived with us. If Jim’d found out, he prolly would’ve smacked my hide.”
The smoke rises up around him, then brushed out into the night air. “I was five. Runnin’ around playin’ cops and robbers, ended up tripping on this skewed nail in the floorboards. Griff spent all night gluing it back together, then turned it sideways so Jim’d never notice. And he never did, but I always knew the crack was still there. Was terrified if he’d ever find it. Never did.”
Ash drops that cigarette and stamps it out. “He never paid attention t’me, not until his reputation was dragged into the gutter. Nobody wants broken goods for a kid—”
“Hey, Ash—”
Ash holds his hand up. “No, no, I know. Sorry. Old habits break hard.” He takes a breath, hand through his hair. “I was a kid. Couldn’t be helped.”
“Good.” Max seems mollified at that. He stops that sharpness to his expression that Ash has only seen when Max talks about the bastards who scared his little boy. Maybe it’s a Dad thing, wearing that expression—Ash wouldn’t know, it’s a bit alien to him. Having adults that care. “Good.”
Feels weird, liking Max’s approval. Kind of wants to seek it out more. “But… yeah. Crack in the vase, and he tried—justifying everything. Kept going on and on about how I was this kid who just drew out trouble, how I was always so sensitive until I was cold, how he did his best and… I just stared at it. Realised he’d never change.” He shrugs, walls back up, blanketing him with security. “That’s that.”
“Did it help going to see him?”
That’s a good question. One Ash… hates that he doesn’t have an answer for, so he’s quieter. He just shrugs, kicks the grainy wood with his roughed-up sneaker.
“That’s okay, too,” Max says, all world-weary and gruff. “It’ll have done something. You’ve got time to process it all. But I’m proud of you for going, and for walking out when you needed to.”
Ash hates the way his cheeks heat at that, and he just grumbles out his reply, “you’re so fucking weird , you know that?”
The old bastard has the gall to laugh at him. “Yeah. Been told that once or twice.”
No doubt about it. Yet somewhere along the way on this way to hell, Max’s good intentions, Eiji’s light, it led him astray. Eiji sleeps on inside, all wrapped up in Ash’s coat, probably exhausted after holding Ash in the car for so long. He didn’t sleep until Ash did. And Max…
Max sits with him at this hour, the sky already black as velvet; the fire from their cigarettes burns the seconds of this moment to ash, like that fire that rid him of past burdens, until only the smoke remained, engulfed by the night air. Max sits with him, and Ash is bewildered that he’s staying. He’s a fixture, as best as he can be.
He’s like Griff that way.
(That’s the highest award he can give.)
“Ash,” Max stomps the cigarette out, and the wooden decking creaks as he leans his arm on his knee. “There’s something I wanna talk to you about.”
Ash feels himself freeze. “…What, you out of lights?”
“No.” Shit. That’s his serious tone. Ash is already counting the number of ways he could’ve— “It’s about… you and Eiji. You plan on living in New York for a while, right?”
Huh ? Max isn’t Blanca, he wouldn’t—disapprove, Max knows Ash loves him , so why the tone? Max isn’t someone who’s easily disappointed in him, Ash—well there’s a million reasons why someone would be, but Max isn’t just someone , so— “Eiji’s got a good deal with a magazine. Friends here, too. Seems best after he gets his green card.”
“And you?” Max turns his head, brow hooked. “You want to stay in this city too?”
“I…” Ash feels the back of his neck prickle with heat. Does he think I’m dragging Eiji down… ? Or maybe Ibe spoke to him? No, no, Max—no, he isn’t. He isn’t . “I do.”
New York, it’s home. As bloodied and grey as the skirmishes of the underbelly made it, at his core, he’s a big apple boy. He’s the library, and Chinatown, and the graffiti riddled underground. His heart beats in Manhattan traffic, his blood the rainwater in restaurant gutters.
“And your gang life, kid? I know you wanted Eiji away from that.”
Ash’s tongue clicks involuntarily. “I—still working on that. But he’s, it’s—it’s being taken care of. I’ve called in favours. My gang—my friends, we’re working on it.”
“Good.”
Relief floods in his veins, and Ash slumps a little. Not many would notice that, but most people don’t pay attention to his body language if it isn’t telling them what they want to hear.
So, when Max procures a slip of paper from his jacket pocket and hands it to Ash, his entire being is just confused . “What’s this?”
Max isn’t looking at him and rubs the back of his own neck. Ash can see the tips of his ears getting red. “Maybe consider it an option for you to take, kid. If you want it.”
“Okay…” Ash narrows his eyes, and as he unfolds the slip, grabs his glasses hanging from his shirt and slides them on to make sense of the words, and once they realign—
Petition for Adult Adoption.
Ash’s brain is blank . He stares, for a good, long while. Blinks, adjusts his glasses, hand hesitantly tracing over the words. Max doesn’t fuck with him about things like this, just like he doesn’t screw him over when it comes to Eiji. This isn’t a joke he can laugh off.
And that’s absolutely fucking terrifying.
See, the thing is, Ash is rarely speechless. There’s always a word ready at the tip of that silver tongue of his, a glib comment ready to fire like his mouth's a pistol, but right now his tongue may as well be cut out entire from his throat. He stares at Max, waiting for the punchline. This isn’t a joke he can laugh off, but Max can, can shatter Ash's entire world right now, and he’s just waiting for the ball to drop.
But it never does. Instead, Max continues his hold on Ash's fragile being with tender care. “You were failed too much by adults who should’ve taken care of you.” Max turns around on his heel and sits back down next to Ash. “Griff, too. Your father forced him to grow up too fast, and he ended up in the same boat I did—preyed on by that corrupt JTORC. He was like you: his heart was too good for that place.”
“I’m not—” Griff was the good one. Light snuffed out too soon. But Max holds a hand up, and Ash, like a child, feels chastised into silence.
“But this isn’t a sense of obligation to Griff, even if I did love him, Ash. Because even if Iraq was a mess, it still led me to you, kid. And for all this hell, you were worth that. I’m so proud of you.” Max’s eyes soften as he smiles at Ash. “Sometimes all I wanna do is brag about you.”
Ash’s heartbeat is in his ears. He crammed as much genuine intent into the jokes, the quips, the sarcastic old man as he addled Max about his age. If he desired a life he could never have, he could at least have a taste under a guise, but…
It’s real ? Ash blinks, daring not to breath loud. All of this is real?
When Golzine forced that adoption, rendered null and void in the end by dubious circumstances of Ash signing, it had left Ash feeling ill . Ready to submit, succumb, barely any hope left until Eiji came to break him out. He never even considered—he’s not— adoption ?
“I-I don’t know,” he manages. Looks at the papers again. “I never thought you… that I...”
“That’s alright, kid.” Kid . He says that so affectionately. He puts his hand on top of Ash’s head, too, even ruffles his hair like he’s five years old again. “Whatever you decide, this’ll still be a place you can call home.”
That just makes Ash’s breathing sharp again. There’s no wrong answer? Even if a no would break Max’s heart? He’d still—and Ash believes him, which is terrifying, because every time he’s placed his trust in adult men it’s always backfired. Even Griff—even Griff ended up snuffed out too early, the first broken promise. But Max.
“Hey,” Max sounds worried as he puts a hand on Ash’s shoulder. “You can say no, I wasn’t trying to pressure you—”
“You want me that much?”
Ash can tell that Max’s gaze follows those hot tears down his face. It should be embarrassing, the way he’s choking up, the way he stammers, like he’s some dumb kid. But Max, he makes it feel okay to be a dumb kid, that he can—that he can mess up and be comforted, and not told that he shouldn’t hope for more, and…
Max pulls him into a hug, papers falling to the floor. There’s stubbed-out cigarettes and ash caught up in the wind. No crickets here, just a distant humbug of city traffic, and the sky is all smog and furious stars trying to break through that wall, desperate to be seen.
Ash isn’t sure. It’s the first time in his life since falling in love with Eiji that it’s felt okay not to know and feel safe with whatever he decides.
Maybe that’s what family means.