The Structural Integrity of a Single Support

Words: 287

Rating: G (and a bit angsty?)

Notes: Hi! I adore BF, but I don't often write for it (something that needs to change). Anyway, I wrote this for practice at writing short pieces (it was inspired by a doujinshi I saw here once where Ash was having a nightmare).

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Ash isn't the only one who has nightmares, although Eiji's probably don't even register in comparison and he can't really bring himself to mention them. Still, some nights he dreams of falling. It's nothing life threatening, just that bar above him, the sun a glaring backdrop beyond it, the dust on the run up in front of him and his pounding feet, his oxygenated muscles. Silence as the end of the pole hits the dirt in precisely the right place; perfection, the way its length bows gracefully under the kinetic energies forced on it as he uses his momentum to bend it down, and then the way it springs back and flings him towards the clear, blue sky above.

He's done it a thousand times, and landed on the mat on the other side of the bar nine hundred and ninety nine.

He dreams of the way it cracks under his weight on that thousandth time. He can feel it all the way down, the exact moment it gives, and that's the nightmarish part about it; not the way he falls, ground rushing up to meet him, tearing agony rushing up in its wake, but the way the strength he so relied on, so believed in, fails him without warning.

He doesn't sleep after such dreams, and his knee seems to ache all over again, a throbbing echo of an old hurt. He lies in bed, and stares at the outline of his friend - on moonlit nights he can see his beautiful, Caucasian features softened and innocent with sleep - and he tries to calm his panicked breathing.

Because Ash needs him, and Eiji can only pray that his strength will not fail when Ash needs him most.