Chapter Text
The best part of the day is the moment Eiji lifts his gaze and his whole face lights up and it’s because Ash is waiting. Just that, waiting, like a very stupid lamppost with his hood pulled up as he tries to somewhat blend in with the creek of the foreign students that gravitate on the school ground.
Eiji’s hand sticks up in the air and the whole regiment of his college friends turns to look at Ash, who looks over his shoulder just in case. Okay, they’re definitely looking at him. Great. He waves with his chewed copy of Invisible Man and doesn’t move from his spot.
The girl with the messy updo of curly hair is the loudest speaker in a small crowd of distinctly non-Japanese people. Thinking about it, it isn’t surprising in the slightest that Eiji managed to make friends with all the foreign students as fast as he put foot inside the campus in the same way he blended in with Ash’s colorful ragtag gang.
Eiji is just so Eiji that he couldn’t stop being Eiji anywhere—and people love him for it. Ash loves him for it and hates himself instead as he struggles to settle in house cat routines and keep his switches from flipping over crowds, loud bangs, and innocent touches.
Another girl, long dark hair and full-rimmed glasses, keeps on talking in laser-focused Japanese for a couple minutes more when the others have already walked away; Eiji nods at her as she points something on the camera screen.
They’re laughing a whole lot for people who are probably talking business. Ash zones out, eyes fixed on the flowery high platform sneakers at the girl’s feet, the way they’re both pointed straight toward Eiji’s stupid Chelsea boots. Until the Chelsea boots start moving toward Ash himself.
“Sorry, you waited for long?”
They don’t hug, but Eiji has a way of opening his shoulders and bouncing at his side that feels like it anyway.
“We can speak Japanese, you know?” Ash rebuts, but gosh, how he misses the way he could read the room, or the whole city; when he wasn’t struggling to grasp the most basic social norms going to the supermarket.
“I know, I know—but I need to keep up the habit or I’ll forget!”
Of course he won’t. Of course he does it to make Ash more comfortable, just like every other thousand little gestures Ash’s hypervigilant mind always notices and catalogs into the ever-growing Eiji-box stored in the calmest part of his very loud brain.
They take the bus and Eiji tells him about this park he wants to go visit on Sunday; it’s supposed to be just the right amount of cloudy and he’d like to catch some good photos of the spot-billed ducks. Ash knows he’ll end up taking way more photos of people because that’s what he likes best, but he complies with the request of reading all about spot-billed ducks on Wikipedia while they wait for their stop.
He doesn’t mind having Eiji’s chin propped on his shoulder as they both hold onto the bar and scroll through duck’s trivia. He tilts his head to look at Eiji’s smiling face, he focuses on the warmth of the side pressed on his and thinks that he could get used to it. That he’s never going to need anything more than this.
“What is it?” Eiji asks, always a bit too attuned to Ash’s trainwreck of thoughts. He must have heard the screeching halt of the brakes and the burst of the engine as Ash’s brain caught fire.
It’s just… he’s happy. This moment, standing in the middle of a bustling crowd of commuters inside a cream-colored municipal bus, both Kanji and English rolling on the display; Eiji at his side and no danger in sight: they’ll get off three stops from here and walk the ten minutes route to their rented apartment, fifth floor in a busy neighborhood and the smell of the Ocean coming right in when Eiji spreads out the shutters on his Saturday mornings housecleaning sprees.
And Ash can see it: for the first time in his life, he can see himself one, three, seven days from here. He can depict something happening in the future that isn’t the abstract conceptualization of a survival plan. He can conceive routine; a mundane, tangible tomorrow in which, statistically speaking, he’s going to be alive and… happy.
As long as Eiji exists, Ash is happy. And he’s never going to need anything more than this. He doesn’t want anything more than this forever.
“Ash?”
“Nothing. Huh, I think we should go at sunset or something, right? That’s a photography thing.”
“You just say that because you don’t want me to wake you up early!”
“It’s Sunday!”
“You work from home! You can sleep in any other day!”
Ash lets himself be lulled by the familiar banter while the big wide chasm of newfound horror opens up inside his skull and starts screaming.
*
Doctor Noor is a sassy old cat-lady; Ash is a bit ashamed to admit that the small, friendly fawn cat that kneads his tights during every session was actually the selling feature that convinced him to stick around for a second session, and a third, and now he goes every Thursday and he even tries to do his homework—fill in the stupid worksheets; think about good outcomes instead of the usual overly-catastrophic ones; practice compassionate self-talk, whatever the fuck that means.
“You’ve been more fidgety than usual,” she notices, offhandedly, while Balwo tries his very worst to catch Ash’s finger tapping on the armrest. Ash turns to look at him, and he winks. Even the cat tries to flirt with him: he should just eject himself out of the galaxy.
“I had too much coffee. Can I ask you something before I go?”
Doctor Noor’s pupils dilate behind her big cat-eye eyeglasses, because this is new: Ash doesn’t usually talk. Or, he does, but he doesn’t volunteer to talk; they mostly spend time strategizing around his daily struggles, his disastrous sleep pattern, his strenuous relationship with food, but it’s been one whole year and Ash has been able to share his past only in vague bits and pieces for doctor Noor to glue together in a mosaic of shrapnel.
“Sure, I hope I can help.” Maybe she thinks this is it; this is the day she finally gets through him, the day they get their own version of that ‘it’s not your fault’ scene in Good Will Hunting, probably the wettest dream of any therapist. Too bad Ash’s life is way more like Scarface with a scoop of Eyes Wide Shut on top.
“How do you understand when someone’s done with therapy? I’m just curious.”
Doctor Noor tilts her head to the side, but she’s fast at masking her surprise behind a polite smile.
“Well, ideally, when the goal is met. The first time you came here, you told me you couldn’t sleep, so one of our goals is to have you sleep through the night.” Technically, he could sleep; only he would then woke up thrashing and screaming and disrupting Eiji’s sleep in the process. In hindsight, he wasn’t thinking straight, because renting a two-bedroom apartment would have costed them much less than the money Ash is spending on trying to fix his brain.
Doctor Noor is empathic but definitely not psychic, so she’s still talking.
“If someone comes here for a phobia of dogs, my job is done when they can pet a dog without being scared.”
Makes sense. Ash lets Balwo grab his finger and nib at it with explorative teeth.
“Okay, but what if that’s impossible. Like, the guy won’t ever be able to pet that dog, but maybe he’ll be able to walk through the park and don’t freak out.”
“That’s usually the outcome, to be honest. Therapy gives you skills that will let you handle stressors and triggers in a positive manner, but the length to which everyone is willing to go is up to them. If the person feels that they’re okay with not petting dogs, no one is going to make them but themselves. We aren’t talking about dogs, right?”
Ash makes a point of deadpanning really hard.
“You got me, Doc. I was talking about pumpkins. Did I ever tell you of my pervasive fear of pumpkins?”
She sighs, because she knows he’s not going to spill it, and lets him tell her all about pumpkins for the last five minutes until the time’s up. She still stops him before he goes.
“Everybody can get better.” She smiles with her chipped canine tooth on display. “I know it doesn’t feel like that sometimes, and if you ever feel like you’re not improving with me, I can surely help you find someone more suitable. But know that you are going to get better.”
Ash doesn’t think that anybody would be more suitable than this small, compact Somali lady who sticks out like a thumb even sorer than himself there in Japan.
That’s not the problem; the problem is that Ash is pretty sure he’s able to walk the dog through the park, or maybe walk through an aisle full of pumpkins, but he doesn’t want to eat the pumpkin. He doesn’t even want to touch the pumpkin: and he’s fine like this. As fine as he’ll ever be, which would be great if Eiji wasn’t literally stuck with him.
He’s always known it, that he would settle for crumbs; but that’s on him: Ash can settle for scraps because he’s never had anything else and he’ll be fine.
Eiji, though; Eiji deserves the whole world. Eiji’s forever is worth way more than Ash's mediocre attempts at normalcy.
“Ash?”
He blinks at the Warner Bros logo on the computer screen. Eiji’s face is shaped in all the kindest lines. There’s a floating plate right there, ready for Ash to grab if he only remembered how to use his hands.
“Are you feeling here?” Eiji asks, and doesn’t leave the plate until he’s sure that Ash’s hold is steady; at this point, he can easily detect when Ash’s mind gets misplaced to leave his body behind: Ash wouldn’t deserve this man not even if he was an actual person instead of a landmine folded inside human skin.
He swallows and shakes his head, but his fingers still don’t feel like his own when he tries to balance the plate on his knees.
“Yeah, don’t worry. Just thinking. Thanks for...” dinner? For being you?
Eiji smiles, unconvinced but willing to play along and be the only steady, restful place in a slippery reality. Ash tries his best to need it—or show the need—only on Thursdays nights, and so Eiji subjects himself to actual Netflix-and-chill and literally any kind of food Ash is willing to at least smell without running to the toilet.
Sadly, this slot is taken by one kind of food: avocado toast is literally half an avocado squashed on a piece of toast and it makes Ash feel like a decadent Bojack Horseman character or something equally depressing.
Eiji has made a more consistent sandwich for himself, tofu and tomatoes peeking from the sides. He nestles beside Ash on the couch and picks up a napkin from the pile he’s carried from the kitchen.
Ash is the one who starts the movie, decided to act as if his mind is still anchored to the ground, which is actually what keeps it there ninety percent of the time—they do say ‘fake it ‘till you make it’, and Ash might be quite the expert at it.
“But are they going to find the dad?” Eiji asks after a while, squinting at the computer screen. He’s still wearing his contacts, eyes tired.
“You don’t remember where the dad is? But you’re from Gizmo. Isn’t it required to know Gremlins if you’re from Gizmo?”
Eiji pokes him back.
“It’s Izumo and you know it.”
“The dad is in the chimney, Eiji.”
That shuts him up good. Ash sighs and sinks deeper into the couch. Maybe he will just drown inside the stuffing surrounded by the psychic warmth that Eiji manages to radiate without doing anything—everything, Eiji does everything: he’s calming and grounding and patient. He scratches Ash’s head with dry, warm fingertips; he makes him tea and he doesn’t ask anything that Ash can’t give, even if sometimes it’s a basic human function like not being a chunk of dead meat that needs the whole first half of Gremlins to munch through three bites of an avocado toast.
Eiji gives him his full attention even when his phone buzzes on the table.
“You don’t answer?”
“I want to see if the dad is really in—”
“Shorter made me watch this darn thing fifteen times, I counted. The dad is inside the chimney.”
“Are we going to watch The Goonies next time?”
“We should watch Stranger Things. Apparently, it has the vibes.” Ash mimics the quotes with two fingers and Eiji blesses him with a laugh.
He places his half-eaten sandwich inside the plate and picks up the phone, then. It could be his sister—Eiji is always looking out for someone, forgetting to share his burdens and his heartbreaks; Ash knows he’s been thinking about going back to Izumo for a bit, his father once again in the hospital.
Eiji frowns at the screen before blocking it and it’s enough for Ash’s alarms to set off.
Eiji picks up his sandwich once again and takes a medium-sized bite, measured and serious.
Ash’s eyelid is twitching.
“Eiji. Do you want me to fucking vibrate out of the visible spectrum?” he asks, chocked.
Eiji lifts his gaze on him and blinks.
“Oh—It’s nothing, don’t worry! Just a friend from school—Mizu-san, I told you about her, I think?”
Sure, Mizu-san. Despite the crowd of screeching gremlins on-screen, Ash’s brain dutifully assembles a puzzle made of frilly skirt and full-rimmed glasses and a small manicured hand waving at Eiji even when he was already walking toward Ash, bag heavy on his shoulder and smile pointed at him.
She’s the only Japan-raised in his group of friends; at least one of her parents is Malaysian, or maybe from the Philippines? Ash is trying very hard to not act like a CIA agent and screen every person that approaches Eiji in any capacity because he’s pretty sure that would warrant him a trip to a psychiatric ward and he’s had enough of those for a lifetime.
“Sure,” he says instead, and smiles. “She’s the cute one with the glasses, right?”
A bit of sandwich falls from Eiji’s lips right in his lap.
“Kuso—Ah, yeas, I guess she’s cute.”
“You did that project together, the one with the black-and-white photos of the seasons—” He hands him a napkin, and Eiji takes it like he’s been offered a pocket-sized spaceship.
“She’s a good photographer.”
Ash nods, and smiles, and thinks about trying and choke on his stupid avocado toast and be done with it. He rubs the pad of his thumb on the seams of the cushion and smells the toast to ground himself.
“And?”
“And what.”
Ash makes a show of rolling his eyes.
“And what did she say, Onii-chan.”
“Oh—she just… She’s asking me out.”
Ash’s brain zeroes for a long second on Eiji’s lips. They’re still moving. Ash breathes.
“Isn’t that how you say it? She wants me to go out with her and Riza-chan and another friend from my class. She’s very considerate—”
Ash nods while Eiji explains how Mizu-san is very considerate: she wants to help Marco, the new transfer student from Italy, to socialize and feel included. How kind of her.
Either Eiji really doesn’t know when someone is orchestrating an entire group hang just to see him outside class or he knows and he’s ignoring it because—fuck. Because of him?
They forgot to bring water, Ash’s tongue is made of rust and metal. Maybe that’s just how shame and guilt taste—the notion of being here, ruining Eiji’s chance at a fulfilling life just by existing.
“Well, that sounds nice.” It’s what comes out. “When is it? You should go.”
Eiji gapes so hard that the sandwich falls from his mouth again and this time there’s no napkin to save his crotch.
“What’s the matter, Onii-chan? Didn’t you tell me that socializing with your coworkers or whatever is, like, a pillar of Japanese society? And, anyway, I’m all for actual Netflix and chill, but I bet it would be nice to do something different once in a while.”
Eiji blinks at him like it’s the first time since they knew each other that he contemplates willingly spending time away from Ash. It probably is, and that’s another testament that this has to stop. Ash must stop it until it’s too late: he’s already years late, because Eiji should have gotten back to Japan the day Ash was framed for murder like a dumbass. The day he had to jump off a wall to save Ash’s useless life.
“You’re right, we should go! You used to hang out at the pub all the time, this shouldn’t be much different. They all speak English, I bet you miss speaking it with other people, and they’d love meeting you.”
He’s smiling so brightly that Ash just doesn’t have the heart to correct him. Of course Eiji would make this about Ash; he’s always trying to spend time with him, to not leave him alone in this foreign country, where he still struggles to hold a proper conversation more because he really doesn’t have anyone to talk to than because of his improvable Japanese.
Only Ash doesn’t care, about conversation, about people. People who aren’t Eiji. And he knows it shouldn’t be like that, that this isn’t what any self-sufficient being should strive for, but Ash has spent so much time being valuable for all the wrong reasons that this is freeing in ways he can barely express.
He can be good for Eiji, by letting him realize how much he’s missing out because of him.
So he hums, and nods, and turns to watch Gremlins like everything’s fine.
“It’s a date,” he says, idiot that he is.
*
The red rice paper lamp paints the bridge of Eiji’s nose and spreads a copper-ish hue on his hair.
Apparently, it’s called akachouchin and Eiji laughs mercilessly when Ash trips on his tongue trying to repeat it.
September is being pretty cruel with the temperature, and t-shirts are more than enough even after-dark, but Eiji is a warm creature at heart and Ash is a lazy creature at heart, so somewhere along the way one of Ash’s sweatshirts must have found its way in Eiji’s side of the laundry and on Eiji’s shoulders. Incidentally, he also looks adorable in it.
Mizu-san looks adorable too: maybe Ash has a type and it’s Japanese sweetheart or something equally embarrassing. She arrives right on time, trying to cover one of Riza’s long steps with two of hers, feet small inside flowery high tops.
“Eiji!”
Riza is taller than Eiji and very loud. She brakes in front of the izakaya in a tingling of statement necklace and almost dislocates Mizu-san’s shoulder, still attached to her by the hand.
“Riza-chan, slow down!”
Riza smiles like the Cheshire cat until Mizu-san steps closer, and maybe on her foot a bit.
“We’re so happy you decided to come, Okumura-san!”
“Yes, so happy. An equal amount of happiness for the both of us,” Riza says, still grinning distinctly toward Eiji while Mizu-san gets two shades too red to blame it on the lantern.
So, this is a turn of events Ash hasn’t anticipated: Mizu-san has a wing-woman and she looks way more capable than Ash himself.
“Ash, these are Mizuno-san and Riza… I mean,” Eiji mumbles, and Riza laughs.
“It’s Anneliese, actually, but Mizu-chan just can’t get it right,” she says, and stick her tongue out to Mizu-san’s scandalized face. “It’s just easier to stick with Riza—anyway, I’m so glad we’re finally meeting Eiji’s infamous American friend! We see you waiting all the time at the bus stop, you’re even more American up close!”
Mizu-san gasps.
“Riza-chan, that’s so rude! Please, forgive her, she’s—”
“Not Japanese,” Riza rebuts, and Ash snickers just right when Eiji groans an “I knew you two would have gotten along”, eyes rolling and sigh on his lips. “Don’t worry, Mizu-san, Ash is sensitive only when he wants to make me feel bad.”
“Not my fault you’re a klutz, Onii-chan.”
This sets off Riza’s laugh. She steps closer to Ash instantly, to ask him all of Eiji’s dirty secrets that he must know since he lives with him: does he snore? Is that ugly Nori-Nori bird on his underwear too?
“Well then, seems like we have business to discuss here, fuck off,” Ash says, and waves at Eiji’s face. He huffs back at him like a pissed-off cat, which apparently is something he doesn’t usually do and makes Riza laugh even harder.
“Come on, Mizu-san, I don’t want to spend time with mean people!”
Bingo: Eiji lets her step inside and he follows close, ready to ask something in Japanese that Ash doesn’t even catch, five fingers held high for the waitress to see. And that’s good: he doesn’t need to listen in; he just needs to smooth things around so that the two can talk and have a pleasant evening, enough for Eiji’s brain to open up to the possibilities.
The izakaya is packed full, but Japan has a way of keeping things orderly where back in New York Ash should have elbowed his way around the room. Instead, they reach a pretty discreet table at the corner where Ash’s paranoia can be assuaged by the proximity to a wide window.
Riza is telling him all about how she’s happy she can talk in English—she really doesn’t have anybody else to talk to since she’s renting a teeny-tiny place near the school all alone and she misses her girlfriend who’s getting a Ph.D. in some abstruse branch of archeology in freaking Oman at the moment…
Ash tries to do a good job of nodding and meets Eiji’s dubious gaze from the other side of the table; he’s ended up stuck in the corner on the other side, Mizu-san waiting for him to sit. But of course Eiji is waiting for Ash to sit first, as he always does wherever they go, from public transit to benches in parks. Waiting for Ash to find a comfortable space to exist, a corner where he can rest with his giant bag of fucking issues. Tonight Ash is going to strangle it and leave it to die under the table, exactly where he’s struggling to slip his too-long legs.
With his back at the door and Eiji’s worried eyes staring at him, Ash feels for a second ready to abort it all. The place is loud with chatters and it smells of cigarettes like some of Ash’s filthiest nightmares, the ones with cheap motels and Marvin’s sausages fingers—he scratches at his nose, straightens his face, and makes space for Riza to place her tiny backpack in between them.
Time starts moving again; Mizu-san is saying something about hokke, that must be a kind of smelly fish-dish Eiji has mentioned to like. She’s pointing at the menu, leaning only slightly enough to respectfully brush the edge of Eiji’s personal space.
“Shouldn’t we wait for Marco?” Eiji asks, squinting at the door behind Ash’s head—fuck, that’s the fucking worst. The window looks easy to open, though. Actually, if something happens, Ash could still grab Eiji and hurl himself on the glass; if he’s decisive enough he’s pretty sure he can destroy the window and avoid hurting Eiji in the process, then—
Normal people at the table are still normally talking without getting wrapped into overly complicated fantasies about imaginary Die Hard situations that won’t happen, because Ash’s action-movie life has ended: he’s living in the rolling credits and he likes it here; it’s safe here, he can just sit and enjoy himself and maybe order a beer and loosen up just enough to make Eiji stop throwing worried glances at his stupidly stiff shoulders.
Riza swipes a thumb on her phone and hums.
“Marco’s almost here! He told me to order whatever we like, because he’s probably going to like it too.”
“We should let Ash-san chose! Okumura-san said it’s the first time in an izakaya for you too?” Mizu-san says, eyes bright behind the glasses, and she looks genuinely interested.
“As long as it isn’t natto, I’m fair game.”
“It means he’s okay with everything,” Eiji says, to Mizu-san’s gaping mouth. She looks at him like he’s solved some extremely complex puzzle.
“Ah—gomen ne, I’m definitely the one who speaks the worst English here.”
“No way, you’re very good, Mizu-san!”
“Sure, way better than Eiji’s first attempts. Did you ever finish watching Sesame Street, Onii-chan?”
Eiji kicks him under the table, right in time for the waiter to come taking their orders.
Ash orders a beer and shoves one hand under the table to pinch his own thigh hard. It’s just a waitress, friendly smile, friendly voice—Ash has done way more dangerous, unpleasant things than sitting for one night with his back to moving people who move; and it’s probably good exercise, right? Stretching his boundaries, challenging himself to be brave and shit?
He obviously startles enough to hit the table with a knee when a pair of heavy steps come from behind along with shouted out, heavily accented Japanese.
“Marco, don’t scare people,” Riza says, and the guy laughs and says sorry and extends a hand for Ash to grab.
“Sorry, I thought I had more time to do everything.” He’s trying to stuff a giant gym bag and an entire bamboo sword beside his chair. “I’m super hungry! Mizu-san, you promised food.”
Food does indeed arrive, and Ash tries his best to discretely avoid the smelly fish without looking like he’s avoiding the smelly fish. Thank God for edamame potential as a very engaging food—you have to pick it up, part the halves, pop the seeds into your mouth; lots to do while everybody else eases into chatting.
Every time they drift into school talking, or too fast Japanese, Mizu-san is kind enough to explain or bring the conversation back on tracks that Ash can follow; she’s a considerate person, definitely class-rep material.
That’s good, and Eiji seems to like her well enough: Ash studies the way he smiles at her, or nods eagerly when she says something smart or—but he does that with fucking everybody. He used to do that with Kong and Bones all the fucking time. He’s doing that with Marco right now as he tries to gesticulate his way through some kendo-related concept, meshing up English, Italian and Japanese… Fuck, Eiji does it with Ash too, every time he starts on a tirade about politics or the last book he read or how difficult kanji are…
“Come on, Ash, kanpai!”
Oh, right. That’s apparently something you do. Ash lifts his beer and knocks it with the other mugs lift in the middle of the table, above food he didn’t realize has come. It throws him off, because, as exhausting as it is, he prefers hypervigilance over drowning inside his fish-bowl mind until he detaches from his body.
Eiji pushes more edamame in his proximity and Ash sticks some inside his mouth; it’s pretty neutral, but such a different flavor from anything he knew before Japan that it’s enough to pin him down on earth once again, let him tune back on the conversation. At the worst fucking possible moment, of course.
“So why are highball drinks called highballs, then!” Riza is asking, tapping on Marco’s mug with a nail.
“Ask the American person, I bet it’s a baseball reference,” he rebuts, finger raised, and Ash feels the grip on his own beer tighten. He swallows chewed edamame, and smiles.
“Nope, that’s a fastball.”
“Oh, you play baseball, Ash-san? It’s pretty popular here, but I’ve never really understood the rules, how does it work?” Mizu-san asks, still so fucking lovely and well-mannered and sharp like a knife right between Ash’s ribs.
Eiji’s eyes flash up. Guilt washes over Ash and throws him out of balance.
“Sorry, I don’t really know, I kinda hate baseball—Hey, where’s the toilet?”
“I think somewhere down on the right,” Mizu-san says, always helpful, but now with a dubious blink of her dark lashes.
Eiji is going to say something—Ash pins him down with a single glance. They exchange a mute conversation in which he tries to convey that he’s fine. He’s fucking fine, he’s not made of glass, he won’t flip just because baseball has been mentioned, even if it gives him the creeps.
He pulls himself out without knocking off Riza or her purse and walks silently and perfectly calmly to the toilet, chatting and laughter in his trail.
He doesn’t realize he was shaking until he struggles to lower the zip of his jeans.
“Just great,” he groans, back pressed to the door.
He’s a mess. He’s such a fucking mess it’s a daily surprise that he’s able to fake being normal long enough to have a conversation with more than two people at once. And he really can’t, right? Before, he could because everybody’s life was fucked up. Because he was the boss and he had a role and he got shit done.
Now he’s Eiji’s American friend, and he sucks at it. It’s crushing, the thought that he really is too bad—not even in the epic, monstrous sense that he’s a killer and whore and all those things that are still true, but Eiji knows about that. Eiji is the one person who somehow, for unfathomable reasons, doesn’t care about those truths.
But Ash is supposed to be his friend, and a good friend can’t be good only when he protects him from firearms—which he consistently failed at, by the way. That means he’s an all-round failure and can’t fuck this up: he can’t fuck this up moping inside a fucking toilet, he’s gotta get a grip and function. He’s done it for years: take all the shit that constitutes the fiber of his body and mind and just push it down until his head was clear enough to act.
He needed half an hour to get over Foxx and most time in his life he didn't even have that. Keep rolling with the punches, imaginary or not, is something he’s supposed to be good at.
Next Thursday he’ll let doctor Noor scold him about how bad he’s failing at therapy or something; now he will compose himself, get the fuck over something that’s only tangentially related to shit that happened over ten years ago on an entirely different continent, and he will let Eiji enjoy his night out and the company of a girl who’s rightfully head over heels for him.
He flushes the toilet even if he didn’t take a piss in the end, and splashes some water on his face.
The mirror returns him a haunted look, so he gives himself five seconds to inhale, exhale and smile.
Heh, good enough.