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"The lofty follower of the sun,
Sad when he sets, shuts up her yellow leaves,
Drooping all night; and when he warm returns,
Points her enamor’d bosom to his ray.”
- James Thomson
The apartment was too quiet for New York, which meant it was one of the good hours.
The lazy light of the late afternoon spilled in through the tall window, turning the dust in the air into drifting gold. The city noise was distant, traffic felt like a faraway ocean, sirens softened into background hum. Safe enough. For now.
Ash was home.
He lay sprawled across the couch like a cat that had claimed the territory, one arm hanging off the side and socked feet resting on the armrest. A magazine rested facedown on his chest. His eyes were half-lidded, not asleep, just resting in that rare state where his body believed it didn’t need to be on guard.
He looked almost boneless like this. Younger. Smaller.
On the rug a few feet away, Eiji lay on his stomach, elbows propped under him, a photography magazine spread open in front of his face. His feet swayed idly in the air behind him, socked toes bumping together every so often. A pencil was tucked behind his ear, forgotten.
Ash cracked one eye open. “Eiji."
Eiji didn't take his eyes off of the page "Hm?"
"Remember to blink for godsake." Ash sighed. "You're gonna get absorbed into the book at this rate."
Eiji was scarily quiet when he got into one of his interests. It was making Ash feel queasy.
Eiji flipped another page, “I’m studying light.”
“It’s some goddamn pictures.” Ash grumbled.
“It’s art.” Eiji cupped his hand heaven ward in mock reverence.
Ash exhaled through his nose. “Nerd.”
"What was the saying?" Eiji smiled faintly, flipping a page with exaggerated care. "Ah! Yes! Pot calling the kettle black."
Ash narrowed his eyes. "Eiji Okumura, are you insinuating that I am a nerd too?"
"What was your first clue?" Eiji deadpanned, like the sassy little shit he is.
"I'm a goddamn gang leader of New fucking York!" Ash indignantly shouted.
"A gang leader and a nerd." Eiji smirked, glad to be able to get under Ash's skin.
Ash huffed. "You have no proof."
Eiji sighed, like Ash was being a particularly dumb child. “You read medical textbooks for fun."
Ash opened his mouth, then closed it, pouting. He turned away, puffing, "I am studying anatomy for ...nefarious reasons. You wouldn't understand."
Eiji laughed softly, the sound small and bright, filling the room in a way nothing else did. With that single laugh, Eiji had claimed victory and Ash couldn't even be annoyed. He liked making Eiji laugh, even at the expense of himself.
A breeze slipped through the window, stirring the curtains. The late sun painted everything honey-warm, catching in Eiji’s hair, turning it almost gold at the edges.
Eiji tapped the page. “Oh, this is interesting.”
Ash made a vague sound of interest.
“This photographer writes what each person reminds him of,” Eiji said. “Not just what they look like. What they feel like.”
Ash stared at the ceiling. “Sounds fake.”
“It’s not,” Eiji insisted, brows furrowing. “Look - he says this woman reminds him of ‘rain on a tin roof.’ Calm but loud in the right moments.”
“That doesn’t mean jack shit.”
Eiji rolled onto his side to look at Ash. “Maybe. But it’s a kind way to see people.”
Ash’s gaze drifted away again. A kind way to see people.
He’d been seen in many ways. And been compared to things his whole life.
Gold. Silk. A prize to be won. A weapon to be used. A doll dressed up and passed around. An angel when they wanted purity. A devil when they wanted sin.
Pretty words from ugly mouths. Hands on his face, tilting his chin toward the light like he was something to be examined.
Gorgeous. Irresistible. Exotic. Perfect.
Every compliment a transaction. Every metaphor a cage.
Even the “good” ones had never been about him; just how he made people feel, what they wanted from him, what they thought they could take. His beauty was currency and his body was leverage. His mind was a tool.
Ash watched the ceiling a moment longer. His throat tightened uncomfortably. Then, casually, like the thought had just wandered by, he asked,
“…What do I remind you of?”
He had to know. What did Eiji see him as? He knew what he looked like. He knew Eiji had eyes too. Maybe Eiji will compare him to an Angel. Or a devil. A jewel maybe.
He needs to know what object he is in Eiji's eyes.
He just had to know.
Eiji turned around to look at him, chin resting on the couch cushion. Ash put his arm over his eyes like he didn’t care about the answer at all.
Eiji smiled a little.
“Sunflowers.”
Something alive.
Ash let out a short laugh. “What, because I’m blond?”
“And your green eyes,” Eiji said easily. “That too.”
“You're too shallow.” Ash guffawed again, turning away.
A sunflower. Something alive. Eiji compared him to something alive. That was already different from all he's ever heard. It was enough.
But Eiji wasn't done yet. He shook his head.
“No. Not just that.” He said, a small smile dancing on his lips.
Ash’s arm slipped just enough for one eye to peek out. He was curious now.
“Then what?”
Eiji thought for a moment, like he was choosing something fragile.
“Sunflowers are gentle,” he said. “They look strong because they’re tall, but the stems are actually soft. They bend with the wind instead of breaking.”
Ash stared, his brows furrowing. Eiji continued, his voice sure. “When you look at a field of them, it feels hopeful. Like things aren’t as bad as they look.”
Ash’s throat felt tight all of a sudden. Eiji wasn’t looking at his hair, or his face. He was looking at him.
“They need care,” Eiji added. “Water. Good soil. Sunlight. If you ignore them, they wither. But if you take care of them, they grow really big. Really bright.”
Ash swallowed. Nobody had ever described him as something that needed care. Only something that survived without it.
Eiji smiled up at him.
“I think you’re like that. You’re meant to be cared for. And when you are… you make the world feel warmer.”
For a moment, Ash looked floored and flooded with emotion. Then his jaw tightened, something akin to anger flashing on his face. His hand fell away from his eyes. The warmth in the room felt wrong now.
A sunflower.
Something so harmless. Something so ingenuous.
He pushed himself upright in one smooth motion, the magazine sliding off his chest and thudding onto the floor.
Eiji blinked up at him. “Ash?”
Ash ran a hand through his hair, not looking at him.
“That’s stupid.” His voice was tight.
Eiji tilted his head. “What is?”
“The flower thing.” Ash leaned forward, elbows on his knees. He was still refusing to look at Eiji. "You make it sound like I'm something ...pure."
"Ash-"
“Sunflowers don’t shoot people, Eiji.”
The words weren’t loud. That made them worse. Eiji's eyes widened.
“They don't sell their bodies. They don’t order hits. They don’t leave bodies in alleys.” His jaw tightened. “They don’t wake up every morning already knowing how many lives they're gonna take before lunch.”
Eiji went quiet.
Ash laughed under his breath, but there was no humor in it. “A sunflower." He shook his head. “That’s not me.”
The late afternoon light still spilled across the floor, still turned the dust gold, but it no longer felt warm. It felt exposing.
I’m not something that makes the world better. I make it worse just by existing in it.
He finally looked at Eiji. There was no anger in his eyes, but something raw and defensive. Almost ...scared.
He looked away again.
“Don’t turn me into something harmless so you can feel better about keeping me around.”
A heavy hush befell both of them. Ash wanted to scream, he wanted to cry, he wanted to break something.
Here it is. The breaking point. The shattering of every illusion Eiji had built.
Ash had served it in a platter. Now he was counting the seconds until Eiji got up to go pack his bags.
Eiji sighed heavily. Ash felt his heart dropping to his stomach. So this is really it.
Eiji turned fully, his back against the couch, looking up at him.
“Sunflowers grow in dirt,” he said gently.
Ash frowned faintly. “That’s not the inspiring metaphor you think it is.”
“I mean it,” Eiji said. “Dirt isn’t clean. It’s full of dead things. Rot. And decay.”
Ash went very still. The light from the window stretched long across the floor, reaching their feet but not quite warming the space between them.
“You didn’t choose the soil you were planted in,” Eiji continued. His voice never rose. "But you still try. You still care and protect. Even when it costs you.”
Ash’s jaw tightened. “That doesn’t erase it.”
“I’m not trying to erase it,” Eiji said softly. “I’m saying it’s not the only thing you are.”
Ash’s fingers dug into his palms. He could almost feel it, the phantom grit under his nails, blood that never seemed to wash out no matter how hard he scrubbed. Faces he didn’t let himself remember. Choices he didn’t regret enough. Choices he regretted too much.
He’d built himself out of that dirt. Out of violence and survival. And Eiji sat there looking at him like something had still managed to bloom.
“I don’t see a killer when I look at you, Ash” Eiji said. His eyes didn’t waver. “I see someone who kept growing in the worst place possible." Ash’s breath hitched, almost soundless.
"Most people don’t survive that kind of soil without becoming only what hurt them.”
Ash’s throat worked, but no sound came out. Eiji’s gaze softened, but his eyes didn’t pity him. That was the difference.
Ash looked away fast, scrubbing hard over his mouth like he could wipe the feeling off his face. His shoulders had drawn tight, defensive, but there was a tremor there now.
No one had ever fought this hard to argue that he was allowed to exist. The room felt too small.
“My hands aren’t clean, Eiji,” Ash said, at last.
“I know.”
Ash’s mouth twitched. “You’re not supposed to agree that fast.”
“I’m not scared of the truth.”
Ash stared at the ceiling. “I’ve tried to wash it off before,” he said. “Feels like it’s stuck under my nails. Like no matter how hard I scrub, it’s still there.”
Eiji’s chest tightened, but he didn’t interrupt.
“I’ve hurt people,” Ash continued, voice eerily distant. “Some of them didn’t deserve it. Some of them did. Doesn’t change the part where they’re still dead.”
Eiji shifted, turning so his arms rested on the couch cushion.
“Can I see your hands?”
Ash shot him a look. “That’s creepy.”
“Please.”
Ash held them out, palms up. Of course he did. Anything for Eiji.
Eiji saw the faint crescent scars along the knuckles. The healing cuts. The places where someone had been too rough with himself. Eiji reached up.
Ash tensed instantly. “They’re not clean.” He repeated.
Eiji’s fingers wrapped around his anyway. “I didn’t ask if they were.”
Ash went still.
“I’m not pretending it didn’t happen,” Eiji said quietly. “I just don’t think it means you have to be alone with it forever.”
Ash’s voice came out rough. “You don’t get stained by standing next to me?”
Eiji squeezed his hand, interlocking their fingers together. Gently, but certainly.
“If you’re carrying something this heavy,” he said, “I want to help hold it. That’s all.”
Ash didn’t move.
Eiji’s warm and steady fingers were still wrapped around his, like holding hands with someone who had just confessed to blood was the most natural thing in the world.
Ash just stared at him.
At the softness in his face. At the way he wasn’t looking away. At the firm certainty in his eyes, like none of this had scared him off. Like he’d already decided something long ago and Ash was only now catching up.
A sunflower.
And sunflowers turn toward the sun.
He’d read that once. Some useless trivia he’d picked up somewhere. They followed the light across the sky, all day, every day, without thinking about it.
Heliotropism.
He almost laughed. So if he was a sunflower, then Eiji was-
The sun.
Oh, how fitting it is.
Ash almost laughs at the simplicity of it, at how obvious the comparison feels now that it’s there, sitting heavy and undeniable in his chest. Of course it would be the sun. Of course it would be Eiji.
He doesn’t burn like the people Ash has known, doesn’t scorch or blind or demand worship. Eiji’s warmth is quieter than that. It seeps and settles. It reaches places Ash had boarded up years ago and somehow, makes space livable again.
Rooms feel different when Eiji is in them; it feels less like battlegrounds, less like cages. Breathing comes easier when he's near. Even Ash’s body forgets to stay coiled, forgets to brace for impact.
Eiji smiles and it's not predatory, not a weapon disguised as kindness. It’s open. Bright in a way that doesn’t expose, only invites. His laugh - God, his laugh - spills out of him like light through an open window, unfiltered, warming everything it touches. Ash has watched hardened men who’ve spent their lives baring teeth instead of smiles somehow loosen around him without noticing. He understands now.
Eiji doesn’t try to make things grow. He just stands there, simply existing, and somehow the dead places don’t feel so dead anymore.
A sun that doesn’t even know he’s one.
And somewhere between watching that light fall over everyone else, Ash realizes with helpless certainty that he’s already turned toward it completely;
That he is already, hopelessly, in love with this sun.
His brain, traitor that it was, reached for a story from it's arsenal.
The myth of Clytie and Apollo. A story he’d filed away years ago from some half-damaged book in a library he wasn’t supposed to be in.
Clytie, the water nymph who fell in love with Apollo, the sun god. She loved him without being asked to. Without being chosen back. She loved him so completely it hollowed her out.
Apollo left. And Clytie didn’t.
She sat on the ground for days, without eating or sleeping. She just watched the sky, following Apollo’s chariot as it crossed from dawn to dusk, over and over. Waiting for a warmth that never turned back for her.
Eventually, the story said, she took root.
Her body gave up being a body. Her feet sank into the earth. Her skin thinned into petals. And she became a flower that could do nothing but turn toward the sun, forever chasing light that would never belong to her.
She turned into a sunflower.
Ash understood that completely. He knew the feeling of being trapped in a body and a life that wasn’t his choice. The soil he’d been planted in was dark and rough, thick with the remnants of what had died before him; of mistakes, violence and broken lives. Every day he had survived, clawing up through that dirt, he carried it with him under his nails, in his skin, in the weight of his bones. Dirt that would never leave him clean.
And he’d always assumed he wouldn’t last long. Twenty years at most. Maybe twenty-one, if luck held. Long enough to hurt and be hurt, long enough to survive the chaos that had raised him, but no more. He didn’t believe he would be around for the world to keep turning. But his sun would burn long after him. His light would reach far beyond Ash, and Ash would fade in comparison.
He would be a footnote. A name mentioned once and forgotten. A figure in Eiji's story, glanced at briefly and moved past. And somehow, that didn’t make his chest tighten. Somehow, the inevitability of it didn’t make him bitter.
Because this love wasn’t meant to be returned. It wasn’t transactional. It didn’t demand safety, permanence, or reciprocity. It didn’t ask him to survive, didn’t ask him to succeed, didn’t ask him to be anything other than himself. It existed anyway, absolutely, all-consumingly, self-destructively, unconditionally. And that was enough.
Eiji had given him something no one else ever had: the ability to love freely, without calculation, without fear. To devote himself completely, even to something that would inevitably outlast him. To burn toward a light that didn’t even belong to him, a warmth he could not contain. And in that quiet moment, Ash understood; he didn’t care if the sun moved on from his sky, if it forgot him, if time erased him from memory. He would always look toward it. Always.
And yet, there was a difference between Clytie and him. Clytie had been forced to stand on the sidelines, to watch, to ache in silence. Her love had been lonely, helpless. She could never reach the sun, could never feel its warmth in her hands. But Ash… Ash could hold his sun. He could feel the weight of him in his arms, the warmth pressed against his chest, the steady certainty in Eiji’s fingers as they intertwined with his. He could exist in the orbit of that light, even if only for a fleeting moment, and it changed everything.
A boy who saw himself as a sunflower, delicate and rooted in dirt that would never leave him clean, and a sun who simply existed, whose brightness illuminated him without effort, without expectation. Who smiled, and laughed, and made the world brighter by just being there. A sun that didn’t demand love, and yet gave it anyway, freely, simply by being himself.
Even if that sun would outlast him by decades, even if he would never reach its height, even if he would eventually wither in his own soil, he would always turn toward it. He would always seek it. He would always hold the memory of it in his chest. He would always love it, because the love itself had been given to him, and it was enough.
Eiji’s voice cut through the quiet. “Ash?”
“We should go to a sunflower field someday,” Ash said, smiling. “You could take a fuckton of photos.”
Eiji’s face brightened instantly. “A fuckton?”
“A fuckton,” Ash confirmed, smirking despite himself.
Eiji laughed, and it was like sunlight spilling across the room. Ash felt something ease in his chest, something he hadn’t realized he’d been holding.
“Then it’s a plan,” Eiji said, squeezing their intertwined fingers. “Together.”
Ash squeezed back gently. “Together,” he echoed.
.
.
.
The field stretched endlessly, a sea of golden heads swaying in the summer breeze. Eiji stepped carefully between the sunflowers, letting the warmth of the sun press against his shoulders.
He stopped and let his gaze sweep over the field. Each bloom seemed to tilt toward the light, reaching and yearning.
Eiji remembered a promise that can never be fulfilled.
The wind caught the petals, rustling them in soft murmurs, as if whispering a name. Eiji closed his eyes and breathed it in. The scent of flowers, the warmth of the sun, the echo of laughter that would never again spill across a room.
He imagined Ash there in the sun, absorbing it all, smiling quietly at the light he had always followed. Eiji’s heart ached with love too big to hold, love that had been returned yet now belonged only to memory.
He walked slowly, hands brushing against the golden heads, tracing the sunlight across their faces. Each flower was vibrant, alive, and beautiful, but none of them were Ash.
And in the quiet, he allowed himself to smile a little, the weight of longing pressing against his ribs. The sun had loved the sunflower back, ardently, unconditionally, even when it was destined to fade. Even now, Eiji kept looking, searching the horizon for the sunflower that had once been his.
He closed his eyes, and the wind whispered across the golden heads. He could almost hear Ash’s laughter in the rustle of petals.
Somehow, even in absence, the sunflower had never left him.
Oh, how beautiful he was, and how lucky the sun had been to love him.