[fic] flower craves a hailstorm
I like to think of this as both of them having their cake and eating it and then never, ever, ever having cake ever again. and yes, resurrected zombie pairing from the land of dormant OTPs :P that said, wahey it's Yuki's big day today! *throws semes at him*
FLOWER CRAVES A HAILSTORM
featuring :: SanaYuki
rating :: PG
soundslike :: angst
summary :: Sanada and Yukimura do everything except explicitly frolic amongst the flowerbeds.
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Grey skies, first shimmer of a drizzle dancing on shoulders and head, all colours slowly folding away out of the world. The faces on the streets that hurry past are alarmed, depressed; it's always like that at the sign of rain, people hurrying to get out of it, going home and ducking under shelter.
There's only one person who, smelling rain fresh and sharp as new metal on the air, looks out of his window, shuts his books and walks out. He carries his umbrella stiffly, like a soldier shouldering a rifle, there's a functionality about him that makes it seem like even walking is fulfilling some duty he's been assigned. When he pauses outside a gate set low in between high-shouldered stone walls, you can feel that he's reached a mission point, he has to stop and assess the situation before proceeding.
A hand touches the gate's bolts, taps the padlock hanging idle from a bar; hnnnph. He pushes the gate open, walks in, the smell of damp and a feeling of warmth rising from the soil on either side of the cobbled path winding through the garden. So much dark, dripping greenery on either side of him, clinging to the walls and spreading over the ground; he can't find any fascination in it, looks quickly away.
The gardener is curled up on a stone bench, knees drawn up and feet off the floor, head snuggled sideways into shoulder. He doesn't wake up when the umbrella's shadow falls over him, and maybe the boy who holds the umbrella lets his grim face soften a little, steals a few moments to just sit and watch. Sometimes it seems as though those artless curves of wide mouth and dark eyes and large, fragile forehead are stolen from a painting, and it's hard to remember that he is also like you, throws up when he's sick and sneezes when he has flu. He is shaking a little now and the boy with the umbrella wants to wake him, puts a hand out but isn't brave enough to touch, what if he breaks, if his skin is anything less than marble-cool and perfect, the way it always seems to be?
"Sanada?"
For a moment, in the long pause between question and answer, the space beneath the umbrella is filled only with the sound of gently falling rain.
"How come you're here?"
Sanada makes a strange sound, a choke and a protest stuck in his throat. Eventually he says, "You shouldn't fall asleep out here. It's raining."
He always states the obvious because he can't really get out the words he wants to say. All he can do is get the tone of his voice across; the message, if you know him, if you can read it, will be there in the sound, not the words. Words are things you can make up if you're clever; sincerity is harder to conjure up, if you don't really have it inside you.
"I wanted to be in the rain for a while," the gardener says. "It's been so hot and dry the whole week, such a horrible feeling, everything withering and dying and I couldn't do anything about it. I felt so happy when I saw such an ugly, heavy sky today. I know, it's odd to think like that," he laughs, "I can't help it. I like it when it rains, it's something you can feel.."
"I know," Sanada says. "Figured you'd do something like this, so.." He trails off, adjusts his grip on the umbrella. "What were you dreaming about? You looked happy."
"Really?"
His face seems only inches away; it is really a reasonable space apart for two friends sharing the same bench to be, but the sense of distance separating the world underneath the umbrella from the world covered in gentle grey rain is huge enough to compress an inch into nothing.
"Yeah. What was it about?"
The gardener shrugs, won't look at him. Perhaps it's close to the kind of dreams he has, when he's worn out with tennis and kendo and falls asleep in the shower listening to the sound of water hissing against the tiles, and the flow of water over his skin becomes the gardener's fingers, steam from the hot water becomes the gardener's breath in his ear. In these dreams, as in reality, the gardener's hands are white and beautiful, but in dreams there is never any dirt on the gardener's hands, nothing is allowed to soil such perfect flesh. It's a nice dream; the sun always shines, a garden can bloom without rain, the gardener does not wipe a hand across his long-lashed eyes and leave dirty streaks across that flower-like face. Sanada frowns, reaches out a hand--
forgets that the gardener is not afraid of his touch only in dreams; because dreams leave you free to believe whatever you want somebody else to be.
He stares at the gardener, who looks back at him. There was no noise; the gardener simply shied away from his hand like a frightened animal, fallen off the bench and into one of his plots. The black, upturned soil is soft and damp from the rain, nothing has been broken, but the blind panic bright and hectic in the gardener's large eyes takes a while to fade, even though he turns his face away.
"Sorry!" he says, and he pretends to laugh.
He gets up, refuses the hand Sanada reaches out to him, although he does not jerk away from it as he did at first. Sanada angles the umbrella outward, but he steps back, he doesn't want it. Rain falls heavier now, the wayward curls of his hair straggle under the weight of so much water, his white shirt and pale trousers are sodden and stained with the rich black soil. There is so much colour and life now in his thin body, that picture-perfect feeling of paint washed away, skin like new-fallen snow streaked with dirt and rainwater; his eyes are flooding dark, he is breaking with seasons and clouds. He is even more beautiful this way, when the part of his lips, the unsteady tilt of his narrow hips and sharp angle of shoulderbone seem to impart something both innocent and ruttish at once. Seeing him like this, having his gaze on you seeking something too exciting and vulgar and filthy to speak of, you realise that you could fall in love with him in a different way--
and that is a terrifying thought, because this is more real, more raw, and less pure than you always thought love should be, isn't it?
He isn't sure what he's doing, from this point on; it feels like he's split into two people now and one of them is going to regret this forever. But it is raining now and Yukimura is standing there now (and this is a Yukimura he's never seen before, or has never admitted to seeing before) and sometimes now feels like it's all we'll ever have, and even if it kills him it's the best way to go, to drown in this steadily falling rain, drunk on this heady, raw desire.
Sanada drops the umbrella, in those last few seconds before everything stops feeling like it's only a dream.
------------------------
fin!
I did have OshiYuki and SanaYanaYuki and general Rikkai idiocy lined up for polishing, but they were all far too depressing to post on this occasion.
EDIT: 'he is breaking with seasons and clouds' is a line from the Dylan Thomas poem 'Ballad Of The Long-Legged Bait', which I really love, it is fucking amazing and I just need to translate it from Dylan-Thomas-ian into English one day.
FLOWER CRAVES A HAILSTORM
featuring :: SanaYuki
rating :: PG
soundslike :: angst
summary :: Sanada and Yukimura do everything except explicitly frolic amongst the flowerbeds.
------------------------
Grey skies, first shimmer of a drizzle dancing on shoulders and head, all colours slowly folding away out of the world. The faces on the streets that hurry past are alarmed, depressed; it's always like that at the sign of rain, people hurrying to get out of it, going home and ducking under shelter.
There's only one person who, smelling rain fresh and sharp as new metal on the air, looks out of his window, shuts his books and walks out. He carries his umbrella stiffly, like a soldier shouldering a rifle, there's a functionality about him that makes it seem like even walking is fulfilling some duty he's been assigned. When he pauses outside a gate set low in between high-shouldered stone walls, you can feel that he's reached a mission point, he has to stop and assess the situation before proceeding.
A hand touches the gate's bolts, taps the padlock hanging idle from a bar; hnnnph. He pushes the gate open, walks in, the smell of damp and a feeling of warmth rising from the soil on either side of the cobbled path winding through the garden. So much dark, dripping greenery on either side of him, clinging to the walls and spreading over the ground; he can't find any fascination in it, looks quickly away.
The gardener is curled up on a stone bench, knees drawn up and feet off the floor, head snuggled sideways into shoulder. He doesn't wake up when the umbrella's shadow falls over him, and maybe the boy who holds the umbrella lets his grim face soften a little, steals a few moments to just sit and watch. Sometimes it seems as though those artless curves of wide mouth and dark eyes and large, fragile forehead are stolen from a painting, and it's hard to remember that he is also like you, throws up when he's sick and sneezes when he has flu. He is shaking a little now and the boy with the umbrella wants to wake him, puts a hand out but isn't brave enough to touch, what if he breaks, if his skin is anything less than marble-cool and perfect, the way it always seems to be?
"Sanada?"
For a moment, in the long pause between question and answer, the space beneath the umbrella is filled only with the sound of gently falling rain.
"How come you're here?"
Sanada makes a strange sound, a choke and a protest stuck in his throat. Eventually he says, "You shouldn't fall asleep out here. It's raining."
He always states the obvious because he can't really get out the words he wants to say. All he can do is get the tone of his voice across; the message, if you know him, if you can read it, will be there in the sound, not the words. Words are things you can make up if you're clever; sincerity is harder to conjure up, if you don't really have it inside you.
"I wanted to be in the rain for a while," the gardener says. "It's been so hot and dry the whole week, such a horrible feeling, everything withering and dying and I couldn't do anything about it. I felt so happy when I saw such an ugly, heavy sky today. I know, it's odd to think like that," he laughs, "I can't help it. I like it when it rains, it's something you can feel.."
"I know," Sanada says. "Figured you'd do something like this, so.." He trails off, adjusts his grip on the umbrella. "What were you dreaming about? You looked happy."
"Really?"
His face seems only inches away; it is really a reasonable space apart for two friends sharing the same bench to be, but the sense of distance separating the world underneath the umbrella from the world covered in gentle grey rain is huge enough to compress an inch into nothing.
"Yeah. What was it about?"
The gardener shrugs, won't look at him. Perhaps it's close to the kind of dreams he has, when he's worn out with tennis and kendo and falls asleep in the shower listening to the sound of water hissing against the tiles, and the flow of water over his skin becomes the gardener's fingers, steam from the hot water becomes the gardener's breath in his ear. In these dreams, as in reality, the gardener's hands are white and beautiful, but in dreams there is never any dirt on the gardener's hands, nothing is allowed to soil such perfect flesh. It's a nice dream; the sun always shines, a garden can bloom without rain, the gardener does not wipe a hand across his long-lashed eyes and leave dirty streaks across that flower-like face. Sanada frowns, reaches out a hand--
forgets that the gardener is not afraid of his touch only in dreams; because dreams leave you free to believe whatever you want somebody else to be.
He stares at the gardener, who looks back at him. There was no noise; the gardener simply shied away from his hand like a frightened animal, fallen off the bench and into one of his plots. The black, upturned soil is soft and damp from the rain, nothing has been broken, but the blind panic bright and hectic in the gardener's large eyes takes a while to fade, even though he turns his face away.
"Sorry!" he says, and he pretends to laugh.
He gets up, refuses the hand Sanada reaches out to him, although he does not jerk away from it as he did at first. Sanada angles the umbrella outward, but he steps back, he doesn't want it. Rain falls heavier now, the wayward curls of his hair straggle under the weight of so much water, his white shirt and pale trousers are sodden and stained with the rich black soil. There is so much colour and life now in his thin body, that picture-perfect feeling of paint washed away, skin like new-fallen snow streaked with dirt and rainwater; his eyes are flooding dark, he is breaking with seasons and clouds. He is even more beautiful this way, when the part of his lips, the unsteady tilt of his narrow hips and sharp angle of shoulderbone seem to impart something both innocent and ruttish at once. Seeing him like this, having his gaze on you seeking something too exciting and vulgar and filthy to speak of, you realise that you could fall in love with him in a different way--
and that is a terrifying thought, because this is more real, more raw, and less pure than you always thought love should be, isn't it?
He isn't sure what he's doing, from this point on; it feels like he's split into two people now and one of them is going to regret this forever. But it is raining now and Yukimura is standing there now (and this is a Yukimura he's never seen before, or has never admitted to seeing before) and sometimes now feels like it's all we'll ever have, and even if it kills him it's the best way to go, to drown in this steadily falling rain, drunk on this heady, raw desire.
Sanada drops the umbrella, in those last few seconds before everything stops feeling like it's only a dream.
------------------------
fin!
I did have OshiYuki and SanaYanaYuki and general Rikkai idiocy lined up for polishing, but they were all far too depressing to post on this occasion.
EDIT: 'he is breaking with seasons and clouds' is a line from the Dylan Thomas poem 'Ballad Of The Long-Legged Bait', which I really love, it is fucking amazing and I just need to translate it from Dylan-Thomas-ian into English one day.