Sunshine After the Rain (the floats-like-a-feather remix)
Title: Sunshine After the Rain (the floats-like-a-feather remix)
Rating:PG-13
Group/Pairing: Koyama/Yamashita
Words: 1,820
Warnings: non-linear timeline, illegal human ownership, implied past suicide attempt
Notes: Remix of crazyfaucet's It Came Suddenly Like A Storm for jentfic_remix Cycle 7. Originally posted here. I did a lot of whining about this so thanks to those of you who let me, and most especially to ryogrande and beltenebra for reading it over for me. Thanks to crazyfaucet for letting me play with her world. I'm sure I wasn't anon at all, but that's never surprising, lol.
Just over a year after they meet, Koyama tells Yamashita his story while they lie together, his hands slipping absently over Yamashita's sweaty, golden skin, over muscles finally beginning to fill out. They are beautiful together like that, and Yamashita marvels as he listens. The story is about a broken heart, like so many are, and the naivety that had led him to believe his first love was forever - and that once it was over, so was he. It's a sad story, Yamashita thinks after it's all been told, bringing Koyama's scarred wrist to his lips and kissing across it, but Koyama's story isn't finished. When he says so, Koyama laughs.
"You're right, of course," he agrees, smoothing his fingers through Yamashita's hair and smiling fondly at him, fragile and hopeful and genuine.
Yamashita smiles back shyly and wonders if it looks the same. They're not perfect, no, and he's beginning to be okay with that. But they're perfect together.
His owner - it is strange to call him that, even now, but stranger still to call him anything else - had made him watch most of the surgeries; as they peeled skin and muscle from his bone and shaved it down to just a thin layer surrounding his marrow before molding lighter-than-air compound around, comparing the work-in-progress to the holographic image floating above until they had it just right; as they folded his tissues back around their creation and knitted it neatly and carefully back together so there would be no scar on his hairless skin to displease his master.
"I should have found you sooner," he would croon to Yamashita, stroking the sensitive skin of barely-healed flesh until Yamashita whimpered. "It would have been easier and better if you were younger, but you're so beautiful, aren't you? Worth the extra effort."
After his owner had left, Yamashita would throw his covers off and wobble to the mirror to examine himself, running his fingers over pale skin stretched thinly over the prominent bumps of his hips, up across his collarbone standing out starkly, over skeletal shoulders. Tracing the same paths over and over, he'd stand for hours, wondering if he was.
Standing at the edge of his kitchen, he watches Koyama expertly cutting and dicing, simmering and flavoring, talking all the while about inconsequential things. He mostly just watches Koyama himself, though, long and narrow all over, light and graceful-looking, and he shocks Koyama into stillness when he pads silently up behind him and presses flattened palms against the sharp lines of his shoulder blades and drags them down to his slim hips. Curling his fingers around Koyama's waist, he slips his fingers under the waistband of his jeans to grip his hipbones lightly. They stand like that for a moment before Koyama drops the knife into the sink in front of him and turns around, bending Yamashita's arms awkwardly in the movement, and kisses him roughly. With little effort, Koyama grips him under the thighs and hoists him up on the narrow counter opposite and presses him back against the wall, groaning when Yamashita wraps thin legs around his waist. Vaguely, Yamashita thinks that he's glad to be handled like a real person and not some valuable figurine that might break under just a little pressure.
The kiss is hungry, Koyama licking into his mouth and sending heat down his spine, and Yamashita presses his tongue against the spiked points of Koyama's teeth to keep his head clear. They fit together in a clash of harsh angles, hurriedly slipping clothes off each other to run fingers over smooth skin and Yamashita marvels at the play of light against dark before Koyama blurs all the edges and drowns them out.
His owner was not young, not strong, but he had laughed like a child in delight when Yamashita was complete and picked him up and swung him around easily. "Well done, my boy. Well done."
"Am I beautiful?" Yamashita had whispered.
"Exquisite," his owner had said.
But that hadn't lasted long.
They sit together outside a café, golden sunlight settling across them and making them squint.
"I couldn't stop thinking about you," Koyama admits with a soft smile, breaking the silence like he breaks apart the pastry in his slim fingers, gently, sliding half of it onto Yamashita's plate and watching Yamashita stare at it. "You glow under the lights, do you know that?"
Of course he knows it, pale skin made incandescent under white lights, blinding. Koyama examines his face earnestly.
"Don't be so hard on yourself," he says with a sigh, breaks off another piece of his pastry and pops it in his mouth, smiling happily to himself, the first real smile Yamashita's seen on him.
He takes a sip of his coffee to stop from blurting out his question, but as soon as he swallows his bitter mouthful it's out anyway. "How do you always smile?" Because even if his smiles are cold, they're always there.
"It's easy," he says with a joking twist of his lips, "I just think of kittens."
Yamashita can't help but laugh at that, it's so obviously absurd, and Koyama's smile widens, warms imperceptibly, Yamashita's laugh dying as Koyama reaches out his fingers to brush delicately against Yamashita's cracked lips.
"You have such a pretty smile, Yamashita. You shouldn't hide it," he says, and there, at the edge of his sleeve, Yamashita sees a long, thin scar, reaches out to touch it, but Koyama draws back with a flustered frown.
Ah.
Another boy had come into the house, a younger, tiny, slight thing with spirit, and his owner's eyes had followed him, full of the knowledge of a new challenge, something else to be conquered and made beautiful. He watched with mixed feelings as the owner took the new boy's measure, though he looked so light already, all sharp angles and lean lines that Yamashita couldn't figure out how he could be improved.
Stripping the new boy bare that night, long after everyone had gone to sleep, he circled him with a critical eye, the boy seemingly indifferent to his nakedness and Yamashita's inquisitive touch. Tilting his head, Yamashita ran his fingers over shoulders too broad for his frame, covered the edges with his hands and knew just what was going to break first.
Before too long he had become the forgotten toy, shoved aside for the shiny new plaything, and he spent days and days in front of the mirror refusing food and thinking on perfection.
Yamashita sits carefully on the edge of the table, the pallid blue gown wafting against his knees with every kick of his legs he gives, pale fingers resting lightly on either side of him as he watches his feet. From the corner of his eyes, he sees Koyama trying not to stare and failing, and he smiles softly to himself.
"You've lost a kilo," the doctor tells him in his deep voice, and Yamashita purses his lips and nods. With a sigh, the doctor stands and steps close, placing a large hand on Yamashita's thin shoulder. "This will only work if you want it to work. I've told you that your skeleton can hold an extra forty kilograms easily, and I need you to at least try to reach that. Your body will shut itself down," he adds gently.
Raising his head, Yamashita looks into Koyama's eyes.
When he returns to his residence - it isn't his home, not yet, but maybe one day - he strips again and stares into the mirror. He traces his fingers across high cheekbones, remembers with a shudder his owner's voice low and intimate in his ears as he did the same and spoke of breaking them to make them sharper. He reaches down to his stomach and pinches skin between his fingers, rolling it thoughtfully.
His owner had underestimated his new toy, though, overestimated his own dizzying ability to rule who he chose. The boy went under the blade only once before he ran, bringing down on them men in suits who captured the owner and put him in chains, took Yamashita too, staring at him with horror in their eyes Yamashita couldn't understand, as they picked him up, lighter than anyone had a right to be. He was perfect, and what were they looking at.
Seized funds from the owner went to "compensate" Yamashita and others, and they had set him up in an apartment once he'd completed rounds of therapy, physical and emotional, that had only truly succeeded in confusing him. He was required to come every three months for check-ups in order to continue receiving money, and no one would hire Yamashita so he had to follow their rules, enough to make them happy, anyway. Possession only shuffled along, and never passed to himself.
He could go where he pleased, however, a new freedom he enjoyed, and he spent most of his time just thinking, tucked in the back of some shop or restaurant, food untouched, people-watching and wondering. Maybe waiting. Trying to figure out what he wanted, other than to please someone else.
"Why is that man so thin?" a little boy asks his mother, who glances apologetically at Yamashita before telling her son not to stare - it isn't polite.
Yamashita doesn't care; he's used to it by now. He just waits patiently until, finally, a nurse he's never seen calls his name. The man has a pretty smile, if one is only looking at his mouth, because the warmth doesn't reach his eyes, but Yamashita doesn't ask anyone for anything he can't do himself.
"They're ready for you, Yamashita-san," he says, coming close, and Yamashita nods and moves to stand.
Even though he must expect it (he has Yamashita's file in his hand, after all), when the nurse wraps long fingers around Yamashita's bicep to help him to his feet, his eyes widen and his mouth opens to emit a breathy 'oh' before his grip gentles, but not before Yamashita crashes into him from the unnecessary force of the tug.
"I'm sorry," Yamashita says, letting the nurse (the white nametag against pale pink scrubs comes into focus - 'KOYAMA') upright him.
"No, I'm sorry. I didn't realize…" he catches Yamashita's eyes and forgets the sentence, if there was even more to begin with. There is a moment of wary recognition before Koyama's face brightens and he smiles his pleasant, fake smile, "This way."
It is a chance encounter, two people meeting under harsh fluorescent lighting, catching eyes, and there's that sudden spark one only finds in movies, though neither say a word. Yamashita only looks trustingly up at the young nurse because it's clear from his eyes that they share the bond of being broken, of hiding their hearts, and two wrongs sometimes do make a right.
Rating:PG-13
Group/Pairing: Koyama/Yamashita
Words: 1,820
Warnings: non-linear timeline, illegal human ownership, implied past suicide attempt
Notes: Remix of crazyfaucet's It Came Suddenly Like A Storm for jentfic_remix Cycle 7. Originally posted here. I did a lot of whining about this so thanks to those of you who let me, and most especially to ryogrande and beltenebra for reading it over for me. Thanks to crazyfaucet for letting me play with her world. I'm sure I wasn't anon at all, but that's never surprising, lol.
Just over a year after they meet, Koyama tells Yamashita his story while they lie together, his hands slipping absently over Yamashita's sweaty, golden skin, over muscles finally beginning to fill out. They are beautiful together like that, and Yamashita marvels as he listens. The story is about a broken heart, like so many are, and the naivety that had led him to believe his first love was forever - and that once it was over, so was he. It's a sad story, Yamashita thinks after it's all been told, bringing Koyama's scarred wrist to his lips and kissing across it, but Koyama's story isn't finished. When he says so, Koyama laughs.
"You're right, of course," he agrees, smoothing his fingers through Yamashita's hair and smiling fondly at him, fragile and hopeful and genuine.
Yamashita smiles back shyly and wonders if it looks the same. They're not perfect, no, and he's beginning to be okay with that. But they're perfect together.
His owner - it is strange to call him that, even now, but stranger still to call him anything else - had made him watch most of the surgeries; as they peeled skin and muscle from his bone and shaved it down to just a thin layer surrounding his marrow before molding lighter-than-air compound around, comparing the work-in-progress to the holographic image floating above until they had it just right; as they folded his tissues back around their creation and knitted it neatly and carefully back together so there would be no scar on his hairless skin to displease his master.
"I should have found you sooner," he would croon to Yamashita, stroking the sensitive skin of barely-healed flesh until Yamashita whimpered. "It would have been easier and better if you were younger, but you're so beautiful, aren't you? Worth the extra effort."
After his owner had left, Yamashita would throw his covers off and wobble to the mirror to examine himself, running his fingers over pale skin stretched thinly over the prominent bumps of his hips, up across his collarbone standing out starkly, over skeletal shoulders. Tracing the same paths over and over, he'd stand for hours, wondering if he was.
Standing at the edge of his kitchen, he watches Koyama expertly cutting and dicing, simmering and flavoring, talking all the while about inconsequential things. He mostly just watches Koyama himself, though, long and narrow all over, light and graceful-looking, and he shocks Koyama into stillness when he pads silently up behind him and presses flattened palms against the sharp lines of his shoulder blades and drags them down to his slim hips. Curling his fingers around Koyama's waist, he slips his fingers under the waistband of his jeans to grip his hipbones lightly. They stand like that for a moment before Koyama drops the knife into the sink in front of him and turns around, bending Yamashita's arms awkwardly in the movement, and kisses him roughly. With little effort, Koyama grips him under the thighs and hoists him up on the narrow counter opposite and presses him back against the wall, groaning when Yamashita wraps thin legs around his waist. Vaguely, Yamashita thinks that he's glad to be handled like a real person and not some valuable figurine that might break under just a little pressure.
The kiss is hungry, Koyama licking into his mouth and sending heat down his spine, and Yamashita presses his tongue against the spiked points of Koyama's teeth to keep his head clear. They fit together in a clash of harsh angles, hurriedly slipping clothes off each other to run fingers over smooth skin and Yamashita marvels at the play of light against dark before Koyama blurs all the edges and drowns them out.
His owner was not young, not strong, but he had laughed like a child in delight when Yamashita was complete and picked him up and swung him around easily. "Well done, my boy. Well done."
"Am I beautiful?" Yamashita had whispered.
"Exquisite," his owner had said.
But that hadn't lasted long.
They sit together outside a café, golden sunlight settling across them and making them squint.
"I couldn't stop thinking about you," Koyama admits with a soft smile, breaking the silence like he breaks apart the pastry in his slim fingers, gently, sliding half of it onto Yamashita's plate and watching Yamashita stare at it. "You glow under the lights, do you know that?"
Of course he knows it, pale skin made incandescent under white lights, blinding. Koyama examines his face earnestly.
"Don't be so hard on yourself," he says with a sigh, breaks off another piece of his pastry and pops it in his mouth, smiling happily to himself, the first real smile Yamashita's seen on him.
He takes a sip of his coffee to stop from blurting out his question, but as soon as he swallows his bitter mouthful it's out anyway. "How do you always smile?" Because even if his smiles are cold, they're always there.
"It's easy," he says with a joking twist of his lips, "I just think of kittens."
Yamashita can't help but laugh at that, it's so obviously absurd, and Koyama's smile widens, warms imperceptibly, Yamashita's laugh dying as Koyama reaches out his fingers to brush delicately against Yamashita's cracked lips.
"You have such a pretty smile, Yamashita. You shouldn't hide it," he says, and there, at the edge of his sleeve, Yamashita sees a long, thin scar, reaches out to touch it, but Koyama draws back with a flustered frown.
Ah.
Another boy had come into the house, a younger, tiny, slight thing with spirit, and his owner's eyes had followed him, full of the knowledge of a new challenge, something else to be conquered and made beautiful. He watched with mixed feelings as the owner took the new boy's measure, though he looked so light already, all sharp angles and lean lines that Yamashita couldn't figure out how he could be improved.
Stripping the new boy bare that night, long after everyone had gone to sleep, he circled him with a critical eye, the boy seemingly indifferent to his nakedness and Yamashita's inquisitive touch. Tilting his head, Yamashita ran his fingers over shoulders too broad for his frame, covered the edges with his hands and knew just what was going to break first.
Before too long he had become the forgotten toy, shoved aside for the shiny new plaything, and he spent days and days in front of the mirror refusing food and thinking on perfection.
Yamashita sits carefully on the edge of the table, the pallid blue gown wafting against his knees with every kick of his legs he gives, pale fingers resting lightly on either side of him as he watches his feet. From the corner of his eyes, he sees Koyama trying not to stare and failing, and he smiles softly to himself.
"You've lost a kilo," the doctor tells him in his deep voice, and Yamashita purses his lips and nods. With a sigh, the doctor stands and steps close, placing a large hand on Yamashita's thin shoulder. "This will only work if you want it to work. I've told you that your skeleton can hold an extra forty kilograms easily, and I need you to at least try to reach that. Your body will shut itself down," he adds gently.
Raising his head, Yamashita looks into Koyama's eyes.
When he returns to his residence - it isn't his home, not yet, but maybe one day - he strips again and stares into the mirror. He traces his fingers across high cheekbones, remembers with a shudder his owner's voice low and intimate in his ears as he did the same and spoke of breaking them to make them sharper. He reaches down to his stomach and pinches skin between his fingers, rolling it thoughtfully.
His owner had underestimated his new toy, though, overestimated his own dizzying ability to rule who he chose. The boy went under the blade only once before he ran, bringing down on them men in suits who captured the owner and put him in chains, took Yamashita too, staring at him with horror in their eyes Yamashita couldn't understand, as they picked him up, lighter than anyone had a right to be. He was perfect, and what were they looking at.
Seized funds from the owner went to "compensate" Yamashita and others, and they had set him up in an apartment once he'd completed rounds of therapy, physical and emotional, that had only truly succeeded in confusing him. He was required to come every three months for check-ups in order to continue receiving money, and no one would hire Yamashita so he had to follow their rules, enough to make them happy, anyway. Possession only shuffled along, and never passed to himself.
He could go where he pleased, however, a new freedom he enjoyed, and he spent most of his time just thinking, tucked in the back of some shop or restaurant, food untouched, people-watching and wondering. Maybe waiting. Trying to figure out what he wanted, other than to please someone else.
"Why is that man so thin?" a little boy asks his mother, who glances apologetically at Yamashita before telling her son not to stare - it isn't polite.
Yamashita doesn't care; he's used to it by now. He just waits patiently until, finally, a nurse he's never seen calls his name. The man has a pretty smile, if one is only looking at his mouth, because the warmth doesn't reach his eyes, but Yamashita doesn't ask anyone for anything he can't do himself.
"They're ready for you, Yamashita-san," he says, coming close, and Yamashita nods and moves to stand.
Even though he must expect it (he has Yamashita's file in his hand, after all), when the nurse wraps long fingers around Yamashita's bicep to help him to his feet, his eyes widen and his mouth opens to emit a breathy 'oh' before his grip gentles, but not before Yamashita crashes into him from the unnecessary force of the tug.
"I'm sorry," Yamashita says, letting the nurse (the white nametag against pale pink scrubs comes into focus - 'KOYAMA') upright him.
"No, I'm sorry. I didn't realize…" he catches Yamashita's eyes and forgets the sentence, if there was even more to begin with. There is a moment of wary recognition before Koyama's face brightens and he smiles his pleasant, fake smile, "This way."
It is a chance encounter, two people meeting under harsh fluorescent lighting, catching eyes, and there's that sudden spark one only finds in movies, though neither say a word. Yamashita only looks trustingly up at the young nurse because it's clear from his eyes that they share the bond of being broken, of hiding their hearts, and two wrongs sometimes do make a right.