The Moon Lives in the Lining of Your Skin
By: TG
Summary: "Hi," he says. His eyes twinkle with amusement and his lips twist into a lopsided smile. "I'm Miyuki Kazuya, the florist from across the street. I need to make an appointment."
Disclaimer: I don't own daiya.
Warnings: none
AN: written for the ao3 holiday exchange for whythehandbasket! happy holidays friend!
this is a companion to The Color of You
A boy moves into the old shop across the street, which in itself is curious because the tattoo parlor doesn't get many new neighbors, and especially not new neighbors who are as attractive as this one.
The sign above the door says Miyuki's Flowers and from what Eijun can tell the boy inside spends his days making pretty things out of plants and flowers that sit tucked away in buckets on the floor. It starts out as listless, uninspired boredom and idle fascination; Eijun should be working on the sketches for his clients, should be cleaning his machine and checking his inks, but the boy is distracting and disarming even from a distance so he spends whatever free time he has watching him instead.
It starts out with watching him work, watching strong wrists and clever fingers turn ribbon into bows, watching him go around to his buckets of flowers to pluck delicate, rotting petals. The boy takes a broom with him to clean up after himself, pretty dead things swept away from sight. Watches the boy tuck his flowers into cheap plastic vases and put them to sleep in dark coolers.
It starts out as something to pass the time between each living canvas and the press of pen on tracing paper, but as the evenings roll on Eijun begins to understand that it's become a little more than that. He finds himself wondering other things, like if the boy hums while he sweeps or if his hair is as soft as it looks or if he ever gets annoyed that he as to clean his glasses fifty times a day because of all the dirt and flower food that smudges them.
The boy looks like a living photograph, tucked away in a frame made of brick and coated in a glaze of glass, and watching him always stirs something passionate and spirited inside Eijun. Conjures thoughts of ink on skin, of pretty free-hand patterns that are just this side of imperfect, of swirls of ink that move with the flex and pull of muscles. Always meaningful and expressive, sharp. Sometimes Eijun feels like he burns with it, and often finds himself wondering what the pretty boy's skin would look like filled with color, applied by Eijun's steady hands.
Okay so maybe he feels low-key creepy watching him all day long, but all he really wants is for the boy to just look up, meet his eyes. He just wants to know if the boy's colors are as pretty as he is.
As if you were on fire from within.
The moon lives in the lining of your skin.
- Pablo Neruda
The tiny bell above the shop door chimes, though no one hears it over the blaring of Kuramochi's favorite band and the buzz of needles working into skin. Eijun sits in the corner, back against a brick wall and eyes focused on the watercolor bleeding into his sketchbook. He is concentrating on the strokes of his brush, the oranges and pinks melting together on the page like a sunset, each line a pseudo-science of color blending and canvas mapping.
He has never felt comfortable following a design.
He is concentrating, until there are fingers sliding along his jaw, under his chin. Concentrating until a warm, stained hand lifts his face, until he meets a pair of the most beautiful honey-brown he's ever seen.
Until the colors explode behind his eyes.
His mouth runs dry and his grip on the paintbrush tightens until the plastic creaks. He absent-mindedly drops it into the water cup, but his fingers curl up again like he wants it back in his hands immediately.
I always knew you would be pretty, he thinks. He can't bring himself to look away from the beautiful boy standing over him, so he lets his eyes follow the curl of sea green at the boy's shoulders and sighs. The color melts into the clearest blue Eijun has ever seen and he itches to get it down on paper. He flails for a second, five seconds. His sketchbook nearly tips off of the table, but the pretty boy catches it with one hand and puts it back. Eijun feels sort of like his world has gone sideways and it takes everything in his power to keep his jaw from flopping open when the boy retracts his hand and shoves it into his pocket.
"Hi," he says. His eyes twinkle with amusement and his lips twist into a lopsided smile. "I'm Miyuki Kazuya, the florist from across the street. I need to make an appointment."
It takes a moment for Eijun to gather his breath.
"Uh, hi. Sawamura Eijun. Welcome to Foul Tip Ink and Piercing."
Eijun has always loved the color of people.
When he is little the colors are everywhere, constantly turning his head, always distracting him. He remembers his mother laughing it off, telling his teachers and his friends' parents that he was born half goldfish. He remembers seeing her pretty white smile fade behind closed doors, the worry lines that crease the corners of her mouth when she doesn't know he is watching.
But the thing is, he's always watching. Always.
Because when he watches –and he always, always does- he can see beautiful, indescribable things in even the most stoic of strangers. The colors of people feel visceral and he delights in catching them. Sometimes they are light and wispy like lace veils, and other times they look like heavy funeral shrouds; he often wonders how some people don't buckle under the weight of them. There are so many colors, colors he doesn't have names for, and he wishes he can push his fingers into them if only to see what they would look like on his own skin.
One day his mother asks him, "Eijun, what do you see when you look at people?" and that's when he tells her.
"I see beauty."
In all his twenty years he has never seen the colors in himself.
Miyuki comes over on his lunch breaks to brainstorm tattoo ideas.
Most of the time Eijun is alone and the parlor is closed, so Miyuki's presence is a welcome distraction from the colorless silence. Eijun wonders if he isn't addicted, because even though the florist mercilessly teases him and drives him to the brink of insanity some days, Eijun still finds himself coming in early, looking forward to the boy's company.
"Only god knows why I put up with you," he always says. Miyuki throws his head back and laughs, and it brings out the smile in Eijun too.
This is the slow-burn way they learn about each other, through silly questions and teasing and childish games of 'have you ever.' He learns that Miyuki hates yogurt, that his favorite baseball team is Yomiuri Giants. He learns that his mother's favorite flowers are the orchid and protea, and that those are Miyuki's favorites too. He learns the nuances of Miyuki's voice, memorizes the smug tilt of his lips when he thinks he has the upper hand, and the way Miyuki's eyes burn into him when he thinks Eijun isn't looking.
One day, Miyuki asks to see one of his sketchbooks. The words are monotone but Eijun can hear the careful way he chooses them, so he puts down his paintbrush and fishes around under his desk. What he brings up makes him pause; the date scrawled across the front coincides with the tenth anniversary of his grandmother's passing.
"Huh," he says, flipping it around so that it was right side up for Miyuki to leaf through. "I forgot that I'd done this. This is probably right up your alley."
Miyuki gives him a discerning look but he catches sight of the first page and then all of his attention is on the book. Eijun watches him leaf through, throat tight, silent.
The sketchbook is full of his grandmother's funeral flowers.
"These are beautiful, Sawamura," Miyuki says. His fingers hover over a blown-out protea. "Can you do something like this for me?"
Eijun stares at the messy splash and blend of color and smiles.
Eijun's first sketchbook comes from his grandmother. She gives it to him on his sixth birthday and it takes him nine whole months to fill it up. When he's done he shows it to her and she smiles so wide her eyes crinkle at the corners.
She tells him, "you are going to be such a good artist, Sawamura Eijun," and he's so pleased he gives her the sketchbook, watches her turn its pages with a warm smile.
His second, third, fourth, and fifth sketchbooks come the next year, and he fills them up just like the first and gives them back just like the first. Just like the first, she takes them in her wrinkled hands and tucks them safely away like little treasures.
The year after that he receives numbers six, seven, and eight, but he only manages to fill up half; the others sit empty because that is the year his grandmother succumbs to breast cancer. Suddenly his bookshelf is full of sketchbooks he never wanted back but can't bring himself to throw out and her absence is the worst kind of emptiness, like the blank white colorless pages he will never touch his pencil to.
The funeral is full of mourners dressed in black and pretty, vibrant flowers. Eijun feels like the scent of them linger on his clothes and hands for days afterward. He only keeps one arrangement, a vase full of roses and carnations and lilies, all white. A card that reads Miyuki's Flowers. We are so very sorry for your loss.
Eijun's world does not fade to black and white; he does not lose his colors. But sometimes he wishes maybe he had.
A few months after her passing Eijun's father leaves for several hours, and when he comes back it's with ink under his skin and red-rimmed eyes and his mother's proud smile. The tattoo is beautiful and the near-reverent way his father touches it make Eijun's mouth tremble with feeling.
Now when he picks up his tattoo machine and sets the needles to his living canvases he remembers his grandmother's proud smile and that tattoo that helped his father fill the blank space in his life left by her passing.
"Don't, senpai," Eijun mumbles. Kuramochi closes his mouth with a click and frowns at him.
There is a pile of pretty paper flowers crumpled up in Eijun's trash bin and there's a headache blossoming behind his eyes. He knows Kuramochi is worried and Eijun hates being the source of his distraction, but he doesn't know how to explain to him how difficult and frustrating it is to feel incapable of capturing the colors he sees. No matter how he mixes he can never get it perfect.
His hands are stained with failures.
Eijun's grandmother is wrong wrong wrong.
She had told him he would be a great artist, but he spends primary and middle school failing his art classes, confused and disappointed and tired of bringing home failed projects and bad report cards. Just because his perception of color and of people never seems to align with anyone else's, just because hesees differently.
When he's thirteen his father takes him aside after he witnesses him trying to throw away one of his art class projects. They spend an hour clicking around on the internet, reading article after article of experiences and research. The science behind his brain fascinates and comforts him, because it's real. It's real and he's not alone, not a freak. Not so different.
"Your grandmother knew," his father tells him. "She saw the way you looked at people. The way you drew. She had it too, you know, she picked your name when you were born because she said you smelled sweet like sunflowers.
"Keep going, Eijun."
Keep going.
He does.
It takes less than two weeks to finish, and once he does he feels numb.
All of his projects are precious to him, all of them important. They are someone's memories, someone's milestones. Someone's battle scars. They are permanent, personal reminders of perseverance, the artistic embodiment of 'gone but not forgotten. Of course, for some people they are just pretty things to decorate their skin, but even those hold meaning.
But this one feels different.
"I think I'm done."
Kuramochi is at his side in an instant, hand squeezing his shoulder, eyes on his sketchbook. He studies it for a heartbeat and then says, "are those his colors? It looks good, Sawamura. Really good."
Eijun reaches up with his clean hand and touches his senpai's fingers in gratitude. It's sinking in, slow-burning elation overruling the exhaustion of hard work. It's sinking in and he feels like throwing his head back and laughing, like he can take on anything, anyone. The world.
"It's about damn time anyway, it's a miracle you have any clients at all," Kuramochi says. He pulls Eijun away from his desk and into a chokehold. He puts up a valiant fake struggle but Kuramochi's hold around his neck is unrelenting as it is gentle, and Eijun sees it for what it really is -a hug.
"Thank you, Kuramochi-senpai," he says, heartfelt. He remembers the worried looks Kuramochi kept shooting him, and the book he'd found a few days ago, partially hidden under the mess on his desk. 1,000 Flowers and Their Meanings.
Kuramochi lets him go and looks away, blush staining the tips of his ears. "Dunno what you're talking about, Bakamura. Better call your four-eyed wonderboy to tell him the news."
Eijun grins and dials the number Miyuki put in his phone under 'most handsome florist.'
"Miyuki? It's Eijun…"
The tattoo takes hours and Miyuki whines and fidgets through the whole thing. Eijun takes great pleasure in shaking him into stillness each time he starts getting shifty, though he's not without sympathy. It's Miyuki's first tattoo and it's complicated, drawn-out, and Eijun won't let him take breaks for the pain because he knows from experience it'll just make it hurt more in the long run.
Besides, Eijun isn't without his own set of difficulties, and if he's suffering then Miyuki might as well suffer along with him. He's wanted to get his hands on this boy for weeks but it's a bit overwhelming now that he's actually here, at the mercy of the needles and Eijun's skillful touch. He sits shirtless, skin smooth and pale like moonlight except for where the color is, pretty blues and greens to match the halo around his head even though he doesn't know it. Eijun spreads his gloved fingers out like a fan on Miyuki's chest, works comforting circles into the muscles to relax him.
The tattoo takes hours and it sort of feels like it's just them, alone in the parlor. Just the buzz of the machine in Eijun's hands and the warmth of Miyuki's eyes on him. It's intimate, tattooing something into someone else's body always is, but with Miyuki it feels...more.
Eijun invests himself in every tattoo and in every client, but his investment in Miyuki is beyond that.
"I think we're done," he says eventually, wiping off the excess ink. He squints, double-checking each little cloud of color. "Go take a look at it in the mirror, but don't touch."
Miyuki glances at him and stands up, body slow and sore from sitting still for so long. This is Eijun's favorite part; finishing the template is a rush but nothing fills him with pride like the looks on his clients' faces the first time they see his work etched onto their bodies. Miyuki certainly doesn't disappoint; when he sees himself he grows still, eyes wide on his reflection.
A bunch of flowers sits under his skin -iris, protea, gladiolus, ranunculus, orchid. They look delicate and alive, pretty little things patterned out to compliment the curves of Miyuki's body. Eijun watches him watch himself, the way he traces the air above the flowers with his eyes, following the wispy angles and curves of their petals. The tattoo curls around his upper arm but the colors spill out over the curve of his shoulder and pool in the subtle dip of his collarbone like they refuse to be contained.
A perfect recreation of the wildness that flicks around Miyuki's shoulders.
"This is beautiful," Miyuki says. Eijun looks up and finds his eyes in the mirror. "It's perfect. Do you know what they mean?"
Eijun gives him a lopsided smile. "Yes. Iris for valor, protea for courage, gladiolus for strength of character, ranunculus for charm, and orchid for pride."
He isn't fluent in the language of flowers by any means, but he has chosen these words very carefully and he can see the gratefulness in Miyuki's smile.
It's a tribute to his mother, after all.
Miyuki dips in as he walks past, brushes his lips feather-light against Eijun's cheek. "And of course, the alternate meanings are purely coincidental?"
Eijun's face erupts into flames. "I have no idea what you're talking about."
"That's too bad, and here I was thinking you might be attracted to me. Guess I can't ask you out on that date," Miyuki drawls.
"Who would be attracted to you," Eijun says, but he's smiling too because of course he's attracted, he's been attracted since before he even saw Miyuki's colors, back when he was just a boy in a window. "Besides, you can't take me out on a date because you owe me a lot of money for that ink. Pay up, Miyuki Kazuya."
Miyuki lets Eijun cover his tattoo with plastic wrap, fingers warm against his skin without the gloves. "Would dinner cover it?" Eijun gives him a skeptical look. "Several dinners?"
"No," Kuramochi says from the other side of the parlor. "Gross."
Eijun sticks out his tongue at his senpai and tugs Miyuki along by the belt loop. "C'mon Romeo, let's go start your payment plan."
The door shuts with a soft click and Eijun toes his shoes off, sighing. It always feels good to come home, even better when he gets to come home to the sound of someone humming and the delicious smell of supper bubbling on the stove.
He grins and makes his way into the kitchen, following the sounds of home. The boy he loves is standing before the stove in socked feet and an apron, hoodie sleeves shoved up to his elbows as he stirs. He's pinching off spices and dropping them into the saucepan, and the scene is so domestic it makes Eijun's heart flutter for a moment.
And he looks amazing in the apron.
"Either you're back there ogling my ass or drooling over the sauce."
"Either way I get to eat something good," Eijun murmurs, sidling up behind the boy to wrap his arms around his waist. "C'mon Kazuya, gimme a taste. I'm starved!"
Kazuya laughs and presses a free hand against the one resting on his stomach, stuffs a forkful of al dente noodles into Eijun's mouth.
"Mm, a good cook and a pretty face. How'd I get so lucky."
A boy moves into the old shop across the street, and then, seven months later, he moves into a new apartment. Eijun doesn't have to wonder about his colors anymore, he sees them every day.
AN: thank you for reading! check me out at kuramisawa or trumpet-geek on tumblr!