Chapter Text
Blaze is the purest definition of a fire; loud, bright, and unpredictable. Though for his tainted name, the smile he wore was anything but – white teeth gleaming and warm no matter what life thrusted him into. Even with countless bandages and fading scars – a vile product of recklessness, his face could shine through the darkest of valleys.
Carefree was another thing the boy was. Wild, nerve-wracking, and erratic. Perhaps Ais was blind as he glared in envy – of how Blaze was able to just be without another regard for judging stares, frightened not by the thoughts of pointing fingers where he was at the other end, sparing not an ear for the whispers that echo his name back and forth.
“No one really likes having him around other than you.”
If only people could see—feel—the very same hands that burst in scorching flames could hold you kinder than the caress of heaven itself. That the same palms, tattered and roaring fire at will, could cradle a soul and gentle the lost.
“What I want to be in the future?”
Blaze never answered trivial nor boring questions with much enthusiasm. Maybe a word or two, at worse – sparing a glance and nothing else.
But Blaze never answered that question at all. Even for all his thoughtful expression, nothing came from his mouth other than a straight, unimpressed line.
“What do you want to be, Ais?”
“Me? I was asking about you, Blaze.”
Silence was everything Blaze wasn’t: peaceful, quiet, and soothing. Yet it’s nothing Ais wishes on anyone; to be in a blank slate of a world with no one else – holding crayons to try and color the canvas, hopelessly smudging to blend the rough textures that just won’t go together despite bearing the same material.
It’s just like him and Blaze, clashing in soul even as they bore the same flesh – the boy was a bucket of paint crashing all over the buildings, streets, and rivers; coloring vibrance in all the hollow spaces of Ais’ head, down to the beating heart he swore was lifeless.
"Why do I have to want for the future when I already have you?"
"No, I was talking about you. What do you want to be?"
"Having you is enough for me not to want anything else. I am what I am, and I don't want to change—okay?"
To want and to need, Ais was both. He claws at the pages of ink filled with repeating, charcoal faces; hours poured to etch a beauty into parchment that he can't recreate no matter the growing ache in his hand, time and effort nothing against his greed.
The spiraling words in the boy’s head were scribbled over and over, never seeming to find the right term even as every second was spent chasing that same warmth, his fiery presence, the gleaming white teeth like no other–
Yet Blaze was to love, his comforting arms welcoming even those who screamed dread, to the ones who drenched his name in acid with their filthy lips, for the ones who speared sharp through his heart without remorse. He reaches out, waits, and accepts.
But is it truly love and not a display of humanity? To accept those who have done wrong against you, despite the simmering disdain and anger becoming a raging flame that roars not passion but burns the soul alive?
To be human is to love; to love is to be human.
Being something, someone—what's it like to just be?
What's it like to feel like Blaze, who just is?
He knows what it means, right?
Right?
"Sometimes, I don't know if I'm a person myself. It's hard to tell with everyone shoving down my throat that I'm a monster."
No—How could fire dancing in your grasp be anything than raw beauty and art? But at once, people stray after the screeches, feigning to the ones who witnessed but felt not – turning a blind eye than to hold in your own palms; than to embrace heat that calms cold.
“Ais, let go of him!”
But alas, the very same fire is colder than Ais’ own hands.
The same palms that brushed through his hair, the voice that tells him it’s going to be okay – No. No, that can’t be right, Blaze is still here, right here in his arms, reaching out for Ais like he always would. He should be. He is. He’s right here, scathed but here. He’s right here. He’s okay.
Nothing, no one, somewhere; fire is heat, and cold is the absence of it.
And Blaze is strangely cold – just like Ais.
"You don't understand,"
No one understands, no one will ever understand. No one will. No one other than Ais. No one other than him alone.
"Let him be, he's grieving."
They say to grieve the dead, but Blaze isn't dead. Right?
Right?