KKM 'Past Loves'
Rating: G
Warnings: None
Theme/Prompt: Past
He was born in America, nearly in the back of a taxi. That's why his Japanese father always gave him American-style presents for his birthday: signed baseballs, team jerseys, Levi's, Coca-Cola in strange little eight ounce glass bottles.
A chunk of serpentine and a hunk of jasper, slivers of beryl, malachite and turquoise, all glued in little black framed boxes to a cardboard-backed children's geology reference from some hokey Wild West Trading Post in Utah, America. It was a weird gift, but no stranger than the lurid green-iced leftover St. Patrick's Day TastyKakes from Dad's trip to Philadelphia when Yuuri was only six.
He'd loved it, almost as much as the baseballs from Yankee Stadium and Wrigley Field. He loved green as a color – it was his favorite, everyone knew; he loved rocks – they were shiny and hard, thunked when you threw them. He treasured his neatly labeled horde of semi-precious stones almost as much as his autographed Pennant flag Dad got him on that same business trip to faraway America.
The eight-by-ten plastic-covered posterboard of 'Fascinating Minerals: Shades of Green' had pride of place on the top of his dresser and he glanced at it every morning before school. Dust settled on the yellowing plastic as the years passed; some of the stones came unstuck on the edges and listed out of their black-rimmed boxes; his Spangolite sample disappeared after Mom cleaned his room. But it was still his treasure, still visible front-and-center long after the blue jeans were outgrown and the fizzy soda consumed – long after the signed baseballs and team banners were safely boxed in the back of his closet.
It was the eyes of a beautiful stranger, eyes that reflected every shade of green and teal and Frankhawthorneite glued to the faded old cardboard, eyes which made Yuuri affectionately recall all the hazy feelings that singular gift had imprinted on his childhood, the very ones that made Dad's 'Geology Knowledge Card' so outstanding in an unending stream of frilly dresses and baseball memorabilia: an appreciation of the past, as crystallized into mineral permanency– and a deep desire to acquire for his own a chunk of all things green.