"Promise of Comfort"
He could definitely remember the first time that Ash hugged him. The one-armed hug that Ash had given him in the jail still popped up randomly in his mind and set him blushing. Of course, the blushing had more to do with what Ash did right after the hug.
Ash’s hands had slid smoothly out of his pants’ pockets, and he’d wrapped one arm casually around Eiji’s neck. The warm weight had been foreign and familiar at the same time. Eiji hadn’t taken Ash to be the touchy-feely sort, and the hug had seemed so strangely boyish.
It had reminded him of the light roughhousing that he and his fellow athletes had always engaged in during pole-vaulting practice. With only two large mats to go around, much of their pole-vaulting practice had consisted of waiting for their turn and doing stretches and other exercises in the meantime. They would watch each other vault and then either mock-boo the effort or start a round of one-armed hugs and backslaps.
Then Ash’s other arm had come up, and his hand lightly gripped the front of Eiji’s shirt. Stiffening slightly in surprise at the sudden closeness, Eiji had only managed a confused, “Huh?” before Ash moved one hand to the small of his back, started stroking behind his ear with the thumb of the other, and brought their lips together into a sudden kiss.
Eiji might have protested, but feeling a relatively chaste lip-to-lip kiss segue immediately into something that Eiji had thought that only long-term couples shared had left him speechless. Looking back at Ash with wide eyes, Eiji had then found himself the recipient of a strangely solemn gaze from narrowed green eyes.
An abrupt wink and grin, alongside a salacious squeeze of the backside, from Ash had broken the intensely intimate gaze that they had shared just a moment before. Then everything went to “fucking hell in a shitty bicycle basket,” as some of Ash’s gang members might say, and Eiji had put the incident in the back of his mind. For the time being.
Right now Eiji really wishes that he could remember the first time he had hugged Ash. Or was this the first time? It was. Wasn’t. He couldn’t remember, but he needed to know.
Two minutes ago, Ash’s voice had broken briefly and then he’d been crying without a sound, the two tears dropping from his eyes and down his cheeks. Eiji had gripped Ash’s shoulder comfortingly and encouraged him the best he could. Ash had put on a wavering smirk and made fun of Eiji’s tofu sandwiches.
Eiji had been relieved. Ash was going to be fine; he would always land on his feet. Then Ash had just toppled right over into Eiji’s lap, and his hands had begun strangling Eiji’s t-shirt. The warm weight was an easy burden to bear-Ash wasn’t that heavy-but suddenly Eiji felt truly scared. His hand hovered awkwardly above Ash’s head.
“Stay with me,” Ash whispers a bit hoarsely, breaking into Eiji’s thoughts.
Eiji opens his mouth, unsure how to answer.
“I won’t ask ‘Forever,’” Ash adds quickly, “Just for now, Eiji.”
His fear leaves him. Eiji knows exactly what to do. He remembers how often his younger sister used to have nightmares. He would turn over in bed in the middle of the night and bump into the heavy weight of his sister huddling into his mattress.
The first time it happened Eiji had been furious. He’d been half-asleep and turning to find a more comfortable way to arrange his legs when his hand had smacked into something warm, alive, and not of his bed. He’d fallen to the floor screaming, and then, realizing that the warm something was his sister, ordered her to go back to her own bed.
However, the next time it happened Eiji was better prepared. Although he sighed in real exasperation, he rearranged his blankets and tossed one over his sister. When she refused to share the nightmare but continued to tremble, he rubbed her back soothingly, mimicking the way their mother used to smooth her hand over their backs when they were young enough to both fit on her lap during story-telling.
Eventually his sister stopped getting nightmares, or maybe she learned how to handle them on her own. However, Eiji knew that she still remembered and appreciated how he’d comforted her during those dark nights.
On his nineteenth birthday, shortly before his injury would force him away from his scholarship and leave him with Ibé-san on a flight to the United States, his sister had given him a hand-woven dream-catcher. She had shrugged casually and said that she had seen it in the novelty shop with her girlfriends. The birthday card she also handed him was the generic sort sold in drugstores everywhere in Japan. But Eiji understood her message.
Eiji smoothes his hand over the blonde strands and then begins rubbing Ash’s back with a random but soothing rhythm. He goes up to the nape of Ash’s neck and then moves back down to the slight dip in the middle of Ash’s backbone-again and again. As the barely noticeable sniffling sounds fall off, Eiji traces circles and stars and even a small caricature of Ash’s favorite type of gun.
Eiji’s index finger and thumb curve together to spell out a word below Ash’s shoulder blades.
“Forever,” Eiji answers. Forever, Ash.