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More than ten—thousand?—years ago, Griffin used to write songs and play them on his grandfather’s acoustic guitar.
He would take every made-up word Ash was fixating on and stick it into his lyrics, and then sing him lullabies and nice, soothing tunes.
It’s a memory fuzzier than a dream, steeped in the light coming from the kitchen’s window in that decrepit cottage that the most broken part of Ash still thinks of as home.
Griff loved folk music and country songs. Oh my Darling, Clementine still comes up in his low, humming voice inside Ash's head whenever the silence is too loud.
So Chop Suey! is the first metal song Ash ever listens to.
It happens in a Juvie cell, a single earbud in his ear attached to the 4 GB SanDisk MP3 player Shorter somehow acquired after a streak of good conduct.
He isn’t supposed to share it, but Shorter isn’t there because he follows the rules and the rules never helped Ash ever.
They listen sitting on the top bunk, feet dangling off the thin, rigid mattress.
Shorter headbangs all the way through the chorus, while Ash ascends to another plane of existence.
He likes this shit.
Dino would hate it, and that’s a reason to like it more but… He likes it. In the same way he likes reading Salinger, Hemingway, Vonnegut, and Asimov.
He likes it like it’s something his—not Dino’s, or any of his clients. Not even Griff’s.
Ash is fourteen and a half, and for the first time in forever he’s got something that’s just his.
He holds onto it tightly all the way to the other side of trials and tribulations until he’s free—and still shackled by all the things he had to do, and endure, and be, for the pleasure and the gain of a bunch of old, rich men.
Now Ash sits on the carpeting inside Yut-Lung’s modern, state-of-the-art rehearsal room the same he used to do inside Chang Dai’s cellar stacked full of sunflower seed oil tanks instead of musical equipment, and listens to Shorter hit the same wrong notes and still sound quite fucking great overall just by sheer intensity.
He’s obnoxious and loud, and Ash loves him.
He loves the way his own fingertips hurt on the strings of a pain that doesn’t mean anything at all, because of all the pain that happened to him at some point, this one is completely his. Under control.
And when Yut-Lung asks why on earth he insists on abusing the fucking guitar if the only instrument he can really play is the piano—classical piano, for the ears of greasy old fuckers who will compliment somebody else for the miracle of this street monkey that’s able to do a party trick— Shorter raises his middle fingers and tells him off, he tells him that Ash can play whatever the fuck he wants.
So Ash plays the guitar and never again the piano, and since he can’t really play the guitar, he sings.
He didn’t think he would have loved that. But whenever that fucking candy bar song pops somewhere in the back of his mind, like a creepy Jack-in-the-box, Ash screams a bit louder until everything disappears in a hoarse burn.
He never thought he could make himself be so loud, like no one’s even listening.
And who cares if no one’s listening? No one did before, and he’s still fine.
As fine as he’ll ever be, probably, and it’s still way more than he could have ever dared to hope when his horizon was the bulging belly of a panting, old geezer.
Yut-Lung doesn’t get it: he’s the one who worries about finding gigs at local venues and following a schedule. He’s the one that knows about melody, scales, and rhythm; the one who studied music theory and plays who-knows-how-many instruments blindfolded.
He lends out books, forcefully and with no discounts on his indignation at Ash’s blatant ignorance.
So Ash reads, and he gets it, that you need to study this shit to call yourself half competent, only he isn’t sure it helps with the music per se.
Music is a thing that happens inside his head, like math, like blind panic; like those depressive spells that leave him dry and empty, and why the fuck does he even bother.
He bothers because of Max, and Jess, and Michael, and even Mary Shelley—Michael’s turtle that he has to feed because Michael forgets.
He bothers for Shorter, Nadia, Sing.
Hell, even for Yut-Lung.
He bothers because even if living is still a fucking slippery slope that he gets to climb on all four, he’s actually come a long way from the very first time he had to fall on his knees when he was seven.
“That’s not—what signature is that!” Yut-Lung yells, every time Ash comes up with something new, a tune that got stuck into his head while he wasn’t sleeping.
Sing is always the first to jump on board, drumsticks ready.
“You’re a freaking octopus, Little Guy. It’s like you got eight arms,” Shorter tells him, and Sing’s cheeks flash up red, almost purple as he changes time another time.
Yut-Lung falls back on the comfy leather couch with the back of his hand on his forehead as if he was an Eighteen-century lady under a fainting spell.
“We should finish a fucking song, before coming up with new fucking songs, you insufferable monkeys,” he tries.
Shorter pops a chewing gum right in front of his nose, and tells him he’s no fun.
And every time, no exception, Yut-Lung greets them the following week with a full bass line to keep everything together as if he didn’t have another million, more pressing things to do.
Ash is pretty sure he has fun too, because of all the things Yut-Lung doesn’t get, what he probably understands better than anybody else, is the need for something to just be one thing and nothing else: music is fun, and nothing else.
In Ash’s world, everything is always something else: food is never just food, and wine makes him puke; so do formal clothing, satin sheets, headboards, cigars, and some music—Rossini, Verdi, Puccini, Wagner, and fucking Mozart.
Sometimes Ash’s own face is the face of somebody who used to be used, his skin crawling from the maggots underneath.
So Ash listens to Queens of the Stone Age and Nine Inch Nails sprawled upside down on Shorter’s bed inside Shorter’s room while Shorter explains how come every Nickelback song sounds exactly like another Nickelback song.
He flails both hands as he fails to change the E cord on his Stratocaster that can’t be anything else because “this was Jimi Hendrix’s piece, Blondie, this makes me channel good old Jimi”—he never mentions that it was his father’s, so Ash doesn’t mention it too.
Shorter too gets it, that sometimes you just want for things to be just one thing and not something else.
Like going out at night to scout for venues that won’t scam them—the time they got sixteen dollars total and Ash had to stop Shorter from punching the patron in the teeth, “you should be grateful, I added one dollar so you can divide evenly between you four,” he said.
They went back and poured Chang Dai’s waste oil on his front door at four in the morning with Yut-Lung standing there both horrified and amazed, and when he dared to accuse them of being childish, Shorter poured some waste oil on him too.
Yut-Lung’s still complaining about his hair never being the same again.
Ash wouldn’t mind, for his hair to smell like deep fried Chinese food forever.
He hates the buttery smell of French food the same he can’t stand the acrid aftertastes of vomit, but he loves Shorter’s charred dumplings and Nadia’s soft, chewy xiao mei.
He likes those shrimp toasts that “totally don’t exist in China, Blondie” and arguing with Shorter despite the fact that none of them has ever been to China.
Ash has never been anywhere.
France and Italy are places he knows from accented tongues that tasted of decadent things, rotten like his insides, and from opera arie he had to sit through under the shiny lights of Carnegie Hall with the hand of some old slug feeling him up, claiming to appreciate him like they appreciated music, food, wines, art, things.
But things don’t have a musical taste. Things don’t like to read books, don’t have friends. Things don’t need to pop down a bunch of pills every day just to keep their body from betraying their mind or vice-versa.
If Ash was a thing, an inflatable doll full of all the empty spaces that were carved inside him with violence and just as painful sweet coaxing—if Ash was a thing molded by somebody else, he wouldn’t feel that dreadful clench around his stomach every time he steps on a stage, and he realizes that people want to listen for a change.
He wouldn’t feel the overwhelming relief of disappearing in a cobweb of strings, bass, and guitars and the drums beating way louder than whatever stroke his stupid heart is tricking him into experiencing.
He’s never as convinced that he’s alive as he is when doesn’t need to exist as anything but the part of something incorporeal.
If he died tomorrow, Shorter, Sing and Yut-Lung would find somebody else to fill his space, maybe somebody who isn’t scared shitless of showing his face in public; somebody whose face isn’t plastered all over the worse part of the dark web.
But it would be different: if there was anybody else back there, throwing his voice and coming up with overly complicated, meaningless lyrics, it would be different.
And that means Ash does mean something, even if it’s just in spurts of a few minutes each once or twice every month.
Maybe it’s meaningless, but he likes it, that light-headed rush of adrenaline and the sandpaper at the back of his throat once he’s finished.
He likes to gulp down a diet coke to soothe it down while the rest keeps on being loud, and alive.
He likes to feel somewhat alive too.
“Underground music scene—report? For a magazine,” Eiji is trying to explain. He gestures with his whole body as English eludes him, fingers wrapped around that stubborn camera as if it’s an anchor.
Shorter pats his shoulder hard enough to make his teeth clatter. “That’s great! And we’re going to be in it, your magazine?”
Eiji squints at his lips, clearly struggling to grasp the foreign words in the chaos of the venue.
The stage is empty now, and most of the people are going to be gone soon, but hyped patrons are still lingering, ordering the last round of beer and chatting louder over their own plugged ears.
To be quite honest, Ash would be ready to sleep if he wasn’t that taken with this short, bright-eyed Japanese boy.
“It isn’t my magazine, I can’t decide. I’m still very new at photos, they are probably bad.”
Sing is already climbing on the stool and over his shoulder to spy on the screen of the camera. “They’re good! I mean, what the fuck do I know, but these look fine to me.”
“If they’re good, we should put them on Instagram,” Yut-Lung decrees, swirling grape juice inside his wine glass like the drama queen he is. “How much do you want.”
“He’s telling you he doesn’t work alone. He can’t sell the fucking photos,” Ash starts, and Eiji turns to look at him with that same mildly stricken expression as before.
If shame wasn’t the centerpiece of Ash’s core emotions, he would even feel a bit embarrassed about it. Or self-conceited, maybe?
“Well, then he can ask his boss, Genius,” Yut-Lung rebuts, venomous.
“I could,” Eiji says, pondering. He searches for the older Japanese guy through the crowd, only for Yut-Lung to clap both hands right near his face.
“Then go, Cardigan boy! Chop chop!” he yells, as Eiji takes off in a hurry.
“You really shouldn’t treat people like that,” Sing tries, only to win a skeptic, “watch me” glance from Yut-Lung.
Shorter shifts to the side, closer to Ash’s elbow, and grins. “He’s clearly into you. Ask him his number.”
“I know when people are into me,” Ash says, instead of choking on his coke.
His whole personality is built around how fast and efficiently he can predict if and how much people are into him, and what they’re going to do about it, and Eiji… He was interested clearly, but in the same way one is interested in an exotic animal he happened to catch in the wild. Ash didn’t get stuck with that stupid Lynx nickname for no reason, that’s all.
Yut-Lung snorts inside his glass. “Cardigan kid? Dear Lord, even Our Majesty the Dickest of Heads could do better than that.”
“That felt like a compliment, somehow,” Ash says, but mostly to Shorter’s hair, since Yut-Lung isn’t known for listening to anything but his own voice, at least when he isn’t criticizing.
Shorter is sporting the smuggest of grins. “Actually, I thought he looked a bit like you, Princess.”
Sing, who tries so hard it’s actually painful to watch, says “I think he was cute too,” so Ash can witness the exact moment Yut-Lung chokes on his bile.
“Of course you fucking do, you peasant. Why don’t you just go and become a bisexual mess like this purple idiot.” He spits it out like a curse.
Shorter flickers him on the forehead. “Hey, I’m very heterosexual! If you don’t count—”
“If we have to count literally anything, I have news for your very heterosexual heterosexuality, Moron.”
They bicker and throw peanuts at each other. Ash doesn’t usually get involved, and he isn’t going to get involved tonight.
His eyes are still glued to Eiji’s head moving through the crowd.
Eiji the cardigan kid, following his boss around as he follows Cain, carrying too much equipment.
He said he doesn’t know shit about music, at least the kind of music Ash cares about. He has a heavy accent, he moves like he doesn’t know where to put himself, an alien on foreign soil.
And he’s cute, alright: Ash’s got eyes.
But, most of all, he asked for permission before taking that photo.
He said please and thank you with that precise, formal bow that made his hair bounce.
It looks fluffy, and it shines under the light coming from the string of lightbulbs on the walls.
Would it be that bad, if Ash was the one interested, for a change? He’s never been interested in anybody like that.
“Where are you going?” Shorter asks, on top of the headlock he’s squeezing Sing in.
The empty can falls inside the bin on the first try and Ash shrugs. “I’m gonna ask him his number." It does sound pretty deranged even to his own ears.
And yet, what could happen? That the cute Japanese boy tells him off? Ash has survived worse things.
“You’re gonna do what?” he hears Shorter say, at his back.
He can feel Yut-Lung’s eyes fall from their socket and squash on the floor.
Ash might thrive a bit on being unpredictable.
He’s never done anything like this before: walk all the way to a nice, cute guy—does this qualify as hitting on somebody? Eiji is technically here to work. Does the don’t-hit-on-working-people rule apply only to customer service or to every kind of job?
Oh no, second thoughts, second thoughts—too late, he’s already there.
Eiji’s eyes meet his and Ash’s brain is screaming to abort mission, bad bad bad, so fucking bad—
“Hey, Joint kid!”
Shorter. The best, worst wingman. Appropriately inappropriate, wrapped around Ash’s shoulder, beer still in hand.
“It’s Eiji,” Eiji says, but he doesn’t seem too bothered.
He’s looking at Ash with a smile. So maybe Ash is hitting on him, only it isn’t that bad? After all, Shorter does it all the time and it works.
“Sure, Edgy!" Shorter says. "Listen up, are you busy next Wednesday?”
Eiji blinks. He opens his mouth, half turned as if to consult his boss, but the guy’s all engrossed in a conversation with Cain and Killer Bee.
Shorter claps one hand on the side of his beer, spilling some on Ash’s sweatshirt. “Perfect! There’s this new venue we want to check out down at the Village—”
“Greenwich Village. The neighborhood,” Ash interjects, picking up on Eiji’s confusion. He earns himself another smile.
Shit: he's cute. Like, seriously cute.
“Yeah, that,” Shorter follows, all cool and absolutely incomprehensible to anybody who doesn’t interact with him daily since he was sixteen. “I mean, you’re here for…?”
“Photojournalism. Underground music scene in New York,” Ash’s brain supplies, quite efficiently, and this time Eiji looks impressed as if Ash remembering something he said was somewhat remarkable.
“See? Perfect!” Shorter says, enthusiastic at his own idea. “You should totally come with us, then! We’ll show you all the undergrounds, and the music, and the New York too.” He fingerguns and flails both eyebrows on top of his shades. Idiot.
Eiji looks flabbergasted. He blinks at Ash. “Yes?” He shakes his head and a slight frown appears. “I think—good idea. I think Ibe-san will be interested.”
Benson? Must be the boss's name?
“No old geezers allowed,” Shorter says, unbearably rude. God bless him. “Only you.”
Eiji frowns, suspicious.
“Only if you feel like it,” Ash adds, because Eiji is cute and all, but if any part of this thing results in somebody doing something they don’t want to do, Ash is going to fucking hang himself with the sling of his stupid guitar case.
But Eiji throws another glance at Benson, and then shrugs. “It seems interesting. I should give you my number?”
It fucking worked? How?
Ash used to be smoother than silk. He used to wrap men five times his age around his little finger—he used to be so fucking scared all the time, because every single one of those men could have just snapped their own fingers, and Ash would have been dead.
He doesn’t know how to do this at all. It terrifies him, how much he’d like to try.
“Sure,” he says, and fishes his stupid flip phone from his pocket, ignoring both Shorter’s groan and Eiji’s wide eyes.
“Oh—maybe I should give you fax number,” says Eiji, completely impassible. “What about telegraph? Or maybe we should use traveling pigeons?”
“This thing works perfectly fine.” Ash punches the keys confidently while Shorter spits out a lung laughing too hard inside his ear.
“I like you, Edgy!” he says, wheezing, and Eiji flashes him a blinding grin.
Shit. Ash might like him too.