When Nothing is Worth Everything
Title: When Nothing is Worth Everything
Characters: Primarily Gintoki, squint and you'll see the rest.
Pairings: None.
Word count: 803
Rating: G
Warnings: None that I can think of.
Summary: Christmas doesn't have to be perfect, just don't spend it alone.
Notes: This was written as a special Christmas drabble for SC's Christmas day, for the wonderful Gintama cast!
Time is fleeting.
Everyone knows that, and yet few understand its meaning. It’s as if every tick of the clock goes unheard as people attempt to buy back time, parley it and complain about wasted moments while they keep carving it off, promising to devote more time to what is important next time.
Possibly, no other holiday commands so much devotion as Christmas. The advertisements promising happiness if you’ll only buy this thing begin showing up in July, stuffed underneath the door, plastered onto the wall beside and shoved in one’s face when all fails. And it doesn’t have to be literal either; when it comes to persuasion, one mention a day with no direct hints still translates to 10 points worth of Wheedling in a single attack, and ten hits are more likely to work than one.
Ahh, Gintoki thinks, the last one’s probably an inevitability. When living with one impressionable girl who really does believe that Barbie can walk in that bust (Don’t ask), it almost becomes the duty of the man of the house to ensure that she gets the happiness that all children are supposed to deserve for Christmas.
He does that precisely by never giving Kagura a chance to think that money equals happiness, since that would essentially make them run out of their happiness for the rest of the year and then he’d have to work.
And to him, work is most definitely not happiness.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Here at Death City, Christmas is an entirely different story. It’s not to say that Gintoki has changed his mind about Santa being a fatass or about the holiday being a waste of time. In fact, considering that he has alcohol dripping down his face and his kimono is all ripped up, anyone who sees him now may wonder if his already cynical view of this supposed wondrous holiday has worsened to the point that he may well become next year’s Grinch if he actually cared that much.
But rather than grumble, Gintoki simply surveys the wreck that is his apartment and toes carefully so as to not disturb the people lying wasted on the floor while he cleans up the mess and mutters something about how he’s definitely not buying alcohol the next time no matter how much ‘she’ wants it.
To anyone else, this may be the scene of a wreckage, a Christmas party gone horribly wrong when someone got really drunk off nothing and wrecked the place and ruined the fun for everyone else. To Gintoki this is certainly something of a disaster, but when he looks around the room after he’s finally done cleaning hours later, it’s less the damage he thinks about and more the people that have contributed to the catastrophe.
For those few hours, it’s almost as if he had gone back to the old days, where laughter had been hearty and rare and screams had been commonplace. But this was far removed, even if there had been a lot of shrieking provided by the supposed manly hosts of the party while a boy had stared before he joined in the fight minutes later and the girl had decided off-hand that she’d be the referee for the match.
Now in the aftermath, he’s the only survivor, everyone else groaning and lying spent on the floor. And he’s not lonely this time, because these crazy people that have unceremoniously destroyed his living room and possibly wreck the bathroom the next morning are his friends and people he cares for, and he’ll pick up after them again and again even if they keep slipping, whether it’s on the battlefield or on the toilet floor.
To Gintoki, being able to welcome an old friend he’s lost into his life again and see another old friend laugh arrogantly while he declares that he’ll most definitely win and then get smacked by a wine bottle is the biggest gift that he’s sure he’ll never get, and that he’s too old for such sentimental and stupid gifts. That’s why he stops for a bit when he unwraps the last gift that’s worth nothing compared to what most of Death City’s people must have received today, something cheap he could have bought for himself that he already buys every week in his own world.
“Don’t ever change”, the note in it says with neatly written calligraphy.
The gift is worth nothing and truthfully, a lot of what he’s received today is worth nothing. But to have been able to receive these things that are every day and boring and ultimately worthless from the same people every year...
That is what means everything to Gintoki, more than anything else in the world. And that is why he’ll always remember this Christmas, far away from home.
Characters: Primarily Gintoki, squint and you'll see the rest.
Pairings: None.
Word count: 803
Rating: G
Warnings: None that I can think of.
Summary: Christmas doesn't have to be perfect, just don't spend it alone.
Notes: This was written as a special Christmas drabble for SC's Christmas day, for the wonderful Gintama cast!
Time is fleeting.
Everyone knows that, and yet few understand its meaning. It’s as if every tick of the clock goes unheard as people attempt to buy back time, parley it and complain about wasted moments while they keep carving it off, promising to devote more time to what is important next time.
Possibly, no other holiday commands so much devotion as Christmas. The advertisements promising happiness if you’ll only buy this thing begin showing up in July, stuffed underneath the door, plastered onto the wall beside and shoved in one’s face when all fails. And it doesn’t have to be literal either; when it comes to persuasion, one mention a day with no direct hints still translates to 10 points worth of Wheedling in a single attack, and ten hits are more likely to work than one.
Ahh, Gintoki thinks, the last one’s probably an inevitability. When living with one impressionable girl who really does believe that Barbie can walk in that bust (Don’t ask), it almost becomes the duty of the man of the house to ensure that she gets the happiness that all children are supposed to deserve for Christmas.
He does that precisely by never giving Kagura a chance to think that money equals happiness, since that would essentially make them run out of their happiness for the rest of the year and then he’d have to work.
And to him, work is most definitely not happiness.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Here at Death City, Christmas is an entirely different story. It’s not to say that Gintoki has changed his mind about Santa being a fatass or about the holiday being a waste of time. In fact, considering that he has alcohol dripping down his face and his kimono is all ripped up, anyone who sees him now may wonder if his already cynical view of this supposed wondrous holiday has worsened to the point that he may well become next year’s Grinch if he actually cared that much.
But rather than grumble, Gintoki simply surveys the wreck that is his apartment and toes carefully so as to not disturb the people lying wasted on the floor while he cleans up the mess and mutters something about how he’s definitely not buying alcohol the next time no matter how much ‘she’ wants it.
To anyone else, this may be the scene of a wreckage, a Christmas party gone horribly wrong when someone got really drunk off nothing and wrecked the place and ruined the fun for everyone else. To Gintoki this is certainly something of a disaster, but when he looks around the room after he’s finally done cleaning hours later, it’s less the damage he thinks about and more the people that have contributed to the catastrophe.
For those few hours, it’s almost as if he had gone back to the old days, where laughter had been hearty and rare and screams had been commonplace. But this was far removed, even if there had been a lot of shrieking provided by the supposed manly hosts of the party while a boy had stared before he joined in the fight minutes later and the girl had decided off-hand that she’d be the referee for the match.
Now in the aftermath, he’s the only survivor, everyone else groaning and lying spent on the floor. And he’s not lonely this time, because these crazy people that have unceremoniously destroyed his living room and possibly wreck the bathroom the next morning are his friends and people he cares for, and he’ll pick up after them again and again even if they keep slipping, whether it’s on the battlefield or on the toilet floor.
To Gintoki, being able to welcome an old friend he’s lost into his life again and see another old friend laugh arrogantly while he declares that he’ll most definitely win and then get smacked by a wine bottle is the biggest gift that he’s sure he’ll never get, and that he’s too old for such sentimental and stupid gifts. That’s why he stops for a bit when he unwraps the last gift that’s worth nothing compared to what most of Death City’s people must have received today, something cheap he could have bought for himself that he already buys every week in his own world.
“Don’t ever change”, the note in it says with neatly written calligraphy.
The gift is worth nothing and truthfully, a lot of what he’s received today is worth nothing. But to have been able to receive these things that are every day and boring and ultimately worthless from the same people every year...
That is what means everything to Gintoki, more than anything else in the world. And that is why he’ll always remember this Christmas, far away from home.