FIC: GINTAMA - (here is the root of the root) [I]
Title: (here is the root of the root) [I]
Fandom: Gintama
Rating: G to NC-17.
Pairing: Gintoki/Katsura.
Word Count: 18,461.
Disclaimer: Gintama is not mine.
Feedback: Much obliged.
Notes: Ginzura and Co through the years; for legein. 50-prompt theme set taken from 1sentence [although I did a lot more than one sentence and broke every rule but "write stuff"].
Notes II: These were written a rrrrrreally long time ago, so beware of canon incongruities! I've decided to leave them as is for posterity.
X-posted at gintama and gintama_yaoi.
#01 - Air
The dojo is small and old, but it isn’t musty, it isn’t claustrophobic [it isn’t anything like the place he once lived]. There is a gentle warmth tucked in the whorls of aged wood that he has never before experienced.
Katsura’s small hands tighten on the edge of his kimono [and nervously, excitedly, he breathes in air that feels fresh and alive for the very first time].
#02 - Apples
Gintoki is not homesick. He isn’t thinking about his grandmother, who had been a clever, sprightly old hag [right up until the very end]. He isn’t thinking about the relaxed routine he’d grown so used to, the comfort of his little, cluttered room, or the favourite climbing-trees he’d left behind.
He misses the apples, that’s all. Everyone knows the apples in the country are best.
#03 - Beginning
“Sensei,” calls out a boy next to him. He has strange, puffed-out white hair and a lazy drawl of a voice. “Sensei, why is that girl here? Aa, I thought only men could be samurai. I don’t want to train with a stupid girl. She’s not even that pretty.” There are a few moments of silence while the horror dawns upon Katsura that the boy’s finger is pointing at...him.
“Sensei, she’s blushing. I don’t want to train with a stupid blushing girl who probably is just here to find a husband anyway-”
Under the gob-smacked, frozen look of his new mentor and the laughing eyes of the class, something that Katsura has held firmly within check finally snaps.
After the two are pried apart, Gintoki’s seat is moved to the back of the class, and Katsura spends the rest of their first lesson in a puddle of shame.
[It’s the beginning of something, anyway.]
#04 - Bugs
It seems that no matter how quickly Katsura moves, how attentive he is to catch the very first call of Bed time!, he is unable to change the location of his futon. Every night, he ends up sandwiched between sprawling Gintoki and smelly Kugimiya, and it is hard to say which one of them is worse.
Of course, that tough decision changes after the evening Katsura silently watches a twitching, beetle-like creature emerge from Kugimiya’s futon and crawl towards his.
“Shove over,” grunts Gintoki sleepily, as Katsura edges onto his mat for the third time in as many minutes. “You’re crowding me.”
#05 - Morning
Shoyou revels in the minutes just before the first call to wake.
They are peaceful moments, in which he simply walks through the well-worn dojo and sips his green tea. With the boys still asleep, there is a lingering feeling of anticipation, of dormant excitement about to renew itself at a moment’s notice.
Perhaps that is what he loves best; that every morning, no matter the season, is spring [though his students, he thinks with a chuckle as he hears the first few disgruntled, clumsy noises, were anything but morning glories].
#06 - Dark
Gintoki really likes the other’s hair. It doesn’t occur to him that this might be weird [and if it did occur to him, it’s not like he would actually care that it might be]. Zura’s hair is everything his wild, spongy perm is not; it’s sleek and soft, black as the nightfall outside. He has even begun to look forward to the thunderstorms that make the calm, quiet boy shake with anxiety.
“Come on, you big baby,” he whispers, moving over on his futon.
Katsura blushes fiercely, looking defensive, but complies all too readily to give his statement any weight. “I’m not scared-”
“I don’t care, just get in. You’re keeping me awake with your whimpering.”
“I wasn’t whimpering! Your futon has crumbs in it. That’s gross. Why were you eating on your futon?”
“...Otomo-san says I have low blood sugar and I need to have cookies in bed.”
“Liar.”
“Shut up and go to sleep!”
When Katsura is dozing fitfully against his side, Gintoki buries his nose in the dark strands. It even smells nice.
#07 - Despair
Takasugi and Gintoki are brawling again. Katsura knows that they, along with anyone within a fifteen foot radius including himself, will get hall-wiping duty if the fight escalates much farther. Gintoki is already bleeding from the nose when, steeling himself, Katsura gets between them. “Stop it, you’re going to get in-”
Gintoki suddenly sneezes explosively, blood and boogers splattering across Katsura’s cheek. “Oh,” says the white-haired boy. “Sorry. If stupid Takasugi didn’t-”
“You deserved that, you idiot permhead-”
“What did you call me-”
With Katsura now catatonic in disgust, the fight rages on [and yes, they all end up with hall-wiping duty].
#08 - Doors
Katsura frowns. “What do you mean, ‘It’s stuck?’”
The white-haired boy gives the pantry door another shake. “I mean, it’s the opposite of opening, stupid,” he huffs. Frown deepening, Katsura vacillates between panic [at being caught], shame [at being talked into sneaking into the pantry and caught], and a stubborn level headedness [at solving the problem presented to them, which is figuring out how to not get caught sneaking into the pantry].
“You know,” he murmurs, sitting primly on a sack of flour, “Kojima said this pantry was haunted.”
“Ah-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha,” replies Gintoki, waving a hand quickly back and forth, as if to fan the words right out of the air like a particularly offensive fart. “Kojima’s a moron, ah-ha-ha-ha-ha, I mean, as if anybody with half a brain believes in ghosts-”
The black haired boy toes a bag of peas onto the floor with a sudden, heavy whomp!, and Gintoki screams.
The door doesn’t stay stuck for long [nor does it stay attached to the door frame].
#09 - Drink
It’s the kind of sky that unfurls like a bright parasol, wide and vivid above. Otomo-san, the housekeeper, idly reads off to the side of the pond, while the samurai-to-be are an exercise in juvenile hyperactivity.
Zura, shy and subdued, is wading just beyond the banks with Matsuo [talking about whatever Zura talks about with other people]. Gintoki, high up on a rock, does not make the amateur mistake of calling out ‘canon ball.’ He is silent as a broken noisemaker as he leaps over the water, aiming as closely to the shallow end as he dares.
The resulting splash is nothing to sneeze at [although Katsura does, at length, thanks to the water now clogging up his entire respiratory system].
“Zuraaa,” calls Gintoki, floating on his back, the picture of tranquility. “The water’s not for drinking.”
It takes Katsura ten minutes to coherently sputter and cough his real name back [and by then Gintoki has already forgotten about the whole affair entirely].
#10 - Duty
There are few things that Katsura holds in higher regard than Sensei’s teachings. He’s not like stupid Gintoki, falling asleep in the back of the class, then begging homework off anyone with ears. Katsura works diligently, trying his hardest to pay attention to every moment of the lesson. Sometimes, he worries that he is not being diligent enough, and he repeats “duty, duty, duty” in his mind to get back on track.
Unfortunately, when the white haired boy asks him what today’s lesson was about, the smaller boy finds he has absolutely no idea. “Duty?” he hazards.
Gintoki gives him a flat look. “It was not about doodie. What is wrong with you?”
#11 - Earth
Katsura has always liked small, dark spaces. When he was younger [surely, he is mature enough to say that now], his largely empty home had been full of nooks and crannies that afforded all kinds of hiding places for a solitary boy to retreat to. Alone with his imagination, he’d sat in his small spaces, mind drifting far away, his daydreams knowing no boundaries [unlike the ones that outlined his life, the ones that kept the gazes of his parents stopping short of seeing him].
When Gintoki discovers his favourite spot [inside a huge, hollow tree trunk that smells of earth and life] Katsura surprises himself by not being upset about losing his secret, losing his privacy. If anything, he hopes the other boy approves.
The white haired boy sniffs once or twice, and then crams himself into the trunk. “S’kinda like a pirate hide-out,” he says matter-of-factly.
Katsura smiles [he’s never had a first mate before].
#12 - Fall
During their first few kendo lessons, Shouyou had thought he had the fighting styles of the two boys pegged.
Katsura was all form and speed, and Gintoki was all surprise and force; this was not uncommon at all, given their respective temperaments and attention spans. What was uncommon was the difference that began to set in once he’d pitted them against each other. He’d avoided having them spar together to bypass the time he would waste disciplining them [they were an unpredictable duo; inseparable, then at each other’s throats, then joined at the hip again, all in the blink of an eye].
What he saw over the days they worked together was nothing short of intriguing. Most boys coveted their individual skills to keep an edge over their comrades, out of friendly rivalry and competition. However, the two boys seemed to trade their skills easily, without discussion or pause; Gintoki had to match Katsura’s form to block his blows quickly enough, and temper his force so he did not tire first. Katsura, in turn, had to develop a keen sense of surprise in order to strike, and the ability to block the other’s stronger blows successfully. They fought fluidly, their movements seeming almost rehearsed if not for the occasional startled grunt [or slipped-out swear]. Sparring against others, Shouyou was pleasantly surprised to see Katsura lunging in a manner characteristic of the white haired boy, and Gintoki’s footwork a direct copy of Katsura’s quick feet.
Today, they are sparringdancingfighting together, and it is Gintoki that falls to the hard floor after a particularly quick succession of hits. The two pant, the exertion of the long fight showing on them both. For a moment, everyone watching holds their breath; Gintoki is an infamous sore loser.
“Ah, jeez that hurt, you stupid wighead. Oi oi, can you show me that backhand-duck-thing?” is all he says, reaching up a hand.
Katsura nods shortly, pulling his friend to his feet, replying neutrally, “You would have seen it coming if your ugly perm wasn’t in your eyes.”
#13 - End
Somehow, no one expects it to be Takasugi. As the boys walk down the road, the short boy lets out a low keen [more like that of a sick animal than anything human]. The keen turns into a low, shuddering groan, that ratchets higher in intensity, until it crashes down again into a sob. Then the sobs keep coming, like waves upon the uncaring shores that are Gintoki’s ears. Walking next to Takasugi, who everyonenoone is glancing at out of the corner of their eyes, Kojima begins to cry, too, unable to hold back anymore in the face of such raw hurt.
The boy beside Gintoki says something, something bitter and unkind, and although Gintoki can’t hear the words over the rage that has been pounding in his brain [sincesincesince-], the sneering mouth serves just fine as a target. Fist clenched so hard the knuckles turn white, he lifts it-
-and stops because of the pale hand that doesn’t touch his shoulder, and the calm, dry voice that isn’t chiding him.
Gintoki slows his mindless, mechanical gait and drops back in the group, then drops behind it, where Zura trails, the very last of the pack. His face is turned towards the ground.
“Zura,” the taller boy slurs [as if he’s forgotten how to speak]. Katsura looks up automatically and he isn’t crying; he isn’t anything at all. The hazel eyes are empty, bottomless. Gintoki has never seen the other boy retreated so far into himself. He hates it. He hates them. The dojo they’re headed to, the revolutionaries’ den, is where he’ll be able to make them pay for his dead teacher, and for Zura’s dead eyes.
Taking the other boy’s hand to pull him along, Gintoki’s voice is rough. “We need to stay together,” he says. He means with the group [as the open road is treacherous and there is a great safety in great numbers], but Katsura’s hand tightens, and it means something else entirely.
They do not separate until they reach the dojo.
#14 - War
Despite the popular belief that, immediately following birth, children from the country are thrown into saddles, Gintoki has never ridden a horse before. Frankly, he doesn’t trust them very much, doesn’t even like them [unlike Katsura, who has been blushing and unresponsive since the big-nostril beasts had been led out of the stable]. The white-haired man heaves a sigh; the stupid, smelly things are necessary, if they are ever to catch up to their new company.
“Her nose is so soft,” gasps Zura. “I’m going to name her Chrissie.” He swings up into ‘Chrissie’s’ saddle like he has been doing it all his life, which rankles when it takes Gintoki eight tries to seat himself.
It seems too simple, but just like that, to the sound of hooves and swearing at faulty stirrups, the boys are off to war.
[It gives Gintoki no little satisfaction that, after they discover the joys of ‘saddle burn,’ Chrissie’s name is changed to something far less cute.]
#15 - Roses
“It’s like having a little brother,” Katsura blurts suddenly, with that familiar half-daydreaming, half-urgent tone characteristic of when Katsura has no idea he is speaking aloud. His eyes are on Sakamoto, who is walking alongside the supply cart ahead in grand strides [he seems taller every day now]. The younger man seems to be laughing at the donkey’s ears.
Gintoki raises an eyebrow, looking at Katsura out of the corner of his eye, but Katsura only blushes vaguely in embarrassment and says nothing. He then becomes tight lipped and aloof, projecting himself as someone more silent than a mute, baldie monk up in the mountains.
Despite the effort put forth, the image is ruined when the donkey makes a half-hearted attempt to kick the loud, annoying human next to it. Katsura mumbles something not entirely suited to his polite, dull exterior, and hurries his next few steps to separate beast and idiot.
As Gintoki absently watches the other samurai fuss over stupid Sakamoto [“Hahahaha! Sorry, I can’t help it! I’m an ass man! Hahahaha!”], he begins to think about Zura’s accidental admission. Before the thought can even begin to form, however, the stupid wig-head wipes dirt from the idiot’s face, and instead Gintoki is left picturing Katsura in a bright, floral kimono and modestly applied eye shadow, warmly but sternly reminding a much smaller Sakamoto to wash his hands before dinner.
No, he thinks with a slowly creeping horror at himself, it’s not like having a little brother.
It’s like being a parent.
A few minutes later, when Gintoki whaps Sakamoto upside the head and shouts at him to get a job, nobody gets it [which is probably a good thing].
#16 - Food
Katsura does not like to touch or be touched.
It is mostly during meals that Gintoki wonders at this odd, inaccessible part of the other samurai, when everyone is crowding around the low, spitting fire warming their meal pot. In the bum-rush to get a suitable scoop of rice or the heftiest looking pork bun, Katsura’s aversion to touch becomes strikingly apparent. The black haired samurai weaves and dodges in the throng, and when he returns with his bowl he easily ducks even Sakamoto’s friendly out-flung arm.
“Are you going to eat all that?” Gintoki asks, leaning over to inspect the other’s helping.
Katsura looks put-upon, first bite poised in front of his mouth. “Yes.”
“I just want one-”
“No.”
“You can’t eat that big ol’ pork bun by yourself, Zura.”
“It’s not Zura, it’s Katsura-”
“You just don’t have it in you.”
“If you don’t leave me alone you are going to have my foot in your-”
Predictably, the argument turns into a scuffle, which Zura wins because he is an underhanded bastard [and yeah, it’s probably going to screw up Gintoki’s spine forever the way Zura is sitting on it like that, but the contact is solid].
#17 - Grave
Gintoki dislikes Takasugi. He has always disliked Takasugi. He dislikes his smirk, dislikes the way he talks, dislikes the smell of that stupid tobacco pipe.
Zura dismisses their constant fighting as remnants of their childhood, a sign of immaturity. “Grow up,” he mumbles at them when they return from gathering firewood with matching black eyes. Sakamoto laughs, but it’s uneasy, and he quickly engages Takasugi [ruffling his hair and making some crack about getting wood].
They’re not stupid, Zura and Sakamoto; just stupidly kind, stupidly optimistic, stupidly forgiving of those they’re loyal to. Zura labours under the [false] assumption that Takasugi and he are, if not friends, at least comrades, as if the world is some big brotherhood where everyone respects each other. Sakamoto is Sakamoto; who knows what [if] he’s really thinking in that afro, but the effort he puts out to smooth things over, to be friendly with Takasugi, are beyond his usual cheerfully oblivious fare.
The intentions are good and so, so apparent, but that son of a bitch never changes. Takasugi will accept their kindnesses and concern all the while he dismisses them as being weak for it.
“They aren’t like us, Gintoki,” he drawls around his pipe as they share watch, Sakamoto and Zura asleep only a few feet away. The shorter man chuckles, but it’s not a happy sound. “They don’t know rage like we do, ah, Shiroyasha?”
Gintoki starts to hate him that night- when he recognizes all the snarling demons within himself baying at him from Takasugi’s single, all too knowing eye. It is a hate that he knows he cannot do anything but accept [they will always be bound by a grave that was never dug, a body that was never buried, and mourning colours never worn].
#18 - Head
Sakamoto is laughing fit to bust a gut, cheeks flush with drink. The company is in great spirits tonight; yesterday’s battle had been a total victory, with no casualties. “Watch, watch,” the idiot is saying into Gintoki’s ear, too loudly. He does, and lo and behold, just as Sakamoto predicted, it is no time at all before a bolder pair of village girls wander up to the table where Zura and Takasugi sit drinking. It is a common occurrence- their dark, serious good looks drew the local women in, but the second either of the two men opened their mouths-
-well, the girls quickly realized that maybe one of the louder, less good looking ones would do.
“Who do you think will blow it first, eh, Gintoki?” laughs Sakamoto, looking rather optimistic. “Ahaha, I’ll bet a round on Takasugi!” It makes sense to go with Takasugi, who is a weirdly talkative drunk, rather than Zura, who, sober or smashed, rarely engages the village girls, and is too painfully shy to even flirt in the first place.
But it only takes Gintoki one glance at Zura’s face to know the other is well and truly plastered.
“A round on Zura,” he mumbles over his cup.
“Hahaha! Deal!”
Takasugi is already speaking with them, hands waving in the air a bit drunkenly, the sword-cutting motions he pantomimes making it clear he is talking about their victory. His lips curl in a sneering leer as he recounts the story with just a little too much force, a few too many details not entirely suited for polite conversation, his intense green eyes not even totally focusing on the girls. They begin to look uncomfortable, and Sakamoto practically bounces in his seat beside Gintoki.
“Ahahaha, you should get the barkeep’s attention now, hahaha!”
Zura’s head [which had bowed nervously over his cup when the women had approached] suddenly picks up as he mumbles something, and Gintoki grins. The shorter samurai is now the centre of attention. Zura dislikes being the centre of attention. He’s confessed to Gintoki that he dislikes it so much that when it happens, he often gets-
“Huwwaaaauuugh!”
-nauseous.
He can always count on Zura.
“It must be your lucky day!” chuckles Sakamoto good-naturedly over the screams. The girls look like they could use some comfort, which makes Sakamoto grin even wider. “Ahahaha, or maybe it’s mine!” he adds with a wink, standing up and intercepting the fleeing girls quickly with a, “Hey, hey, you’re both really pretty, I promise I won’t barf on your sandals! -Where are you going? Can I come too?”
It isn’t until Sakamoto is out of sight that Gintoki realizes that idiot bastard didn’t buy him his round. “Zuraaaa!” he shouts across the tavern. “You owe me a round!”
“Okaaay,” calls back Zura fuzzily, wiping his mouth.
#19 - Light
They rush through the undergrowth after the fleeing party of Amanto, twigs snapping under their charging feet [like bones, like triumph]. The gangly, strangely reptilian legs of the creatures are too ungainly on the unfamiliar terrain, and their flight is short lived. When two are felled by arrows, their leader belts an unearthly cry, and the Amanto swing around all at once, tails lashing for balance behind them like rudders. Their foreign movements had once made Katsura uncertain, disturbed by their alien nature. Now, he sees only bodies and motions and weapons unfit to meet the force of a true samurai head on.
The samurai do not stop their charge, not when the beasts snarl, raising axes and throwing sharp, eccentrically shaped projectiles. Katsura weaves and dodges, his naginata held loosely in his hands, an extension of himself as it deflects the whirring thrown weapons. He is the first one to hit the line of Amanto, and he bows low and plunges the long, wicked blade of the naginata into the exposed belly of a creature. With a yell, he braces the pole and rips the blade upwards, lifting the Amanto clear off the ground, letting gravity further cleave it’s entire upper body in two, the spiked rivets of the blade hooking and catching on the jaw bone. He flings the body overhead and sideways, and it falls to the roots and dirt in a ghastly, hemorrhaging heap.
The entire action happens in just a few scant seconds.
Fleeing was the beasts’ only chance at survival.
Near him, Gintoki lets loose a warrior’s shout as he swings his sword in a fast arc, decapitating two Amanto at once. The rest of the skirmish progresses too quickly to keep track of; Katsura expertly cleaves a wide hole in the group with furious, swift swings of his naginata until a lone Amanto manages to slip past it [admittedly, right into his katana]. Takasugi barks something to him that his senses have already processed, and as he withdraws the katana from the ribcage of one Amanto, he thrusts it backwards into the one that had advanced behind him. Stab, duck, slice, impale, breathe, repeat [you have threatened our landslivesideals, and you will not be shown any mercy].
When Katsura wipes the blood from his face, he turns it towards the dawn of the new day [towards the light of the rising sun of Japan].
#20 - Solid
Their entire company is packed like sardines across the floor of an abandoned barn. Katsura knows his body needs rest desperately, but finds his mind whirling, and his eyes staring at the rafters above.
“Come on, you big idiot,” Gintoki whispers near his ear [and even now, Katsura marvels, years later, the other man still has no idea what a real whisper sounds like]. The white-haired samurai peels back the smelly, scratchy blanket, opening it to him.
“I’m not scared,” Katsura murmurs, and he isn’t. But his conviction [everything] feels shaky, these days. How much good are they really doing? Is this really honouring Sensei’s memory? Why don’t the men talk about their plans for after the war, anymore?
“I don’t care, just get in,” comes the lazy drawl, breaking through the waves of doubt, followed by a pair of arms that easily pull Katsura against the taller man’s chest. “You’re keeping me awake with all your thinking.”
“Some people do that, sometimes, thinking,” Katsura sighs back distractedly. The blanket settling back around them seems oddly familiar, the stench of it even more so. He blinks a few times. “This blanket smells like ox. Did you steal this off one of the oxen?”
“...The ox told me it was making him overheat and he paid me 300 yen to take it.”
“Liar.”
“Shut up and go to sleep.”
Katsura’s mouth twitches and surprisingly, his eyelids suddenly do feel heavy , as if taking their cue from the weight of Gintoki’s head on top of his, or the grounding arm slung around his waist. Finally, Katsura rests [even if everything else is shaky and uncertain, Gintoki will always be here, solid and real].
#21 - Secret
Sakamoto knows more than the company thinks he does. It’s pretty funny how that is, so he laughs when he thinks about it [and he laughs at Gintoki’s morning hair, and he laughs at Takasugi’s oral fixation, and he laughs at- well, a lot of things].
Most of the secrets he knows are funny- like that Yoita is afraid of spiders, and will scream like a little girl if you put one in his tent. But not everything is so amusing, and Sakamoto knows unhappy secrets as well- like how Takasugi is slipping further away from them every day, becoming consumed by whatever he hides behind his sneers and bandages. And yes, it seems strange, but even in the midst of this gritty war, he has found out some happy secrets too, like the reason why it is only Gintoki who is able to make Katsura laugh as if he isn’t holding anything back.
It goes without saying that Sakamoto knows his own secrets [and soon, so soon, he’ll find out the secret of what lies out there in the great black void, too].
#22 - Honour
Thanks to Zura’s promotion of rank, they haven’t paid for a drink all night.
“Congratulations, Katsura-san,” says yet another recruit, depositing another round of drinks on the table. Katsura, who as of yet has not refused a single drink on the grounds of being rude, is so drunk at this point all he can do is smile and nod. As the recruit bows and returns to his place at the bar, Zura lifts one of the cups-
-and misses his mouth completely. The sake pours down his jaw into his hair.
“Ahaha,” he chuckles, quiet huffs of normally so hard-earned laughter. “My hair is thirsty.”
For Gintoki, it’s strange and amusing to be on the other side of the sobriety spectrum [he has the unlucky privilege of being one of the watchmen tonight]. “You’re hammered,” he observes fondly.
Zura makes an effort to try and straighten his bizarrely loose posture. “I am not hammering anything,” he replies with great dignity. He’s still smiling, as if it’s not an almost alien expression for his gloomy face [as if he knows it does something indescribable and agitating to the backs of Gintoki’s knees to see it, and is just trying to piss him off, as usual].
“Your tiny brain’ll be hammering tomorrow.”
“No it won’t. S’not tiny.”
“Not as tiny as other things.”
“Mm. What?”
“Ah, you really are plastered, tomorrow you’re going to be such a pain.”
“You’re a pain! And your face’ss …” The shorter man’s face screws up in concentration, and he ends up with “...unfortun'tely proportioned.”
“Such callous words. You’re a nasty drunk, Zura.”
“Katsura.”
“Zura.”
“Katsura!”
“St’p bickering like n’ old married couple n’ pass it,” slurs Takasugi, gesturing vaguely to the bottle at the centre of the table. The shortest samurai is almost as happily wasted as Zura is, because word around camp says he’s next in line for rank advancement [Zura’s good news is his good news; ‘too young’ is not a factor in a war that needs the vibrancy and the will of youth]. Zura tries to hand the sake to him helpfully, but it slides out of his clumsy fingers, upending and rolling towards Sakamoto, who rights it unevenly. His afro almost seems to perk as he gets an idea.
“Ahaha, hey, lets’ do a toast!” cheers the tallest man, ruffling Takasugi’s hair as he laughs. It’s extremely hard to tell how drunk Sakamoto is since the tallest samurai has no inhibitions for booze to lower.
“To what?” murmurs Takasugi, swatting the big hand banging away on the top of his head. “Victory?”
“That’s been done to death,” dismisses Gintoki. “Aa, it’s a jinx, anyway.”
“Ahahaha, how about a toast to getting lucky tonight?”
“That’s even more of a jinx, idiot!”
“To...Shetland ponies...n’ soft manes.”
“You are so goddamned drunk.”
Sakamoto suddenly rises unsteadily, his face bright with glee. “I know! Hahaha, Katsura, Katsura, you should say something!” Zura blushes, shaking his head bashfully [the blush/smile combination making the irritating feeling in Gintoki’s knees spread to the pit of his stomach]. Sakamoto wheedles and cajoles, and [inebriated as he is], Zura’s no match for the sheer force of the other’s charm.
Somehow, he ends up on Sakamoto’s shoulders. His refilled sake cup sways in his hand, spilling alcohol onto Sakamoto’s bushy hair like rain to an eccentric flowerbed. “Listen up, assholes!” shouts Takasugi, drawing the eyes and ears of every samurai in the bar. “Yer new captain’s got something to say!”
“He does?” murmurs Zura dazedly to the side, and Gintoki snorts into his palm.
“Ahahaha, Katsura! Go on, go on!”
Buoyed on an ocean of sake, Zura clears his throat [instead of kneeing Sakamoto in the chin and escaping, as he probably should]. “Ah, hello,” he announces rather amiably, although his cheeks are still a deep red. Hearing his own strange tone, he seems to make a concerted effort to pull his thoughts together. He coughs again, his other hand bracing on Sakamoto’s head like it’s a podium. As he holds his head up higher and looks more alert, a more respectful hush goes over the bar.
“I just want to say…” he finally says at length, and there’s a solemn pause.
Everyone waits for their captain to speak again, to impart his words of wisdom and fan the flames of victory.
“Amanto really suck.”
Sakamoto laughs so much they both topple backwards onto their table, breaking it in two.
#23 - Flexible
Takaya is a new recruit. He is, technically, a little too young to fight [but even young ones have debts to repay]. Perhaps he had just been in the right place at the right time but Katsura-san, the Katsura-san, the Daybreak himself- has entrusted the carrying of the next months’ rations list to him. He clutches the rolled-up paper tightly in his fist as he runs through the encampment, holding it close to his body [as if it were a very fragile egg].
The older samurai’s tent is on the farthest edge of the camp, and he pauses outside to catch his breath. The setting sun casts hazy silhouettes of two figures inside the flimsy animal hide, and Takaya cannot repress a shiver; where Katsura-san is, the fearsome Shiroyasha is never very far. The young man cannot fathom why such different people would spend so much time together, and wonders what the real story is behind it all.
When the shadow of the Shiroyasha moves over the prone, lying outline of Katsura-san, Takaya’s free hand twitches to the hilt of his sword [he immediately feels ashamed; the Shiroyasha is their demon, after all- right?]. “Oi oi, don’t give me that dirty look, it won’t hurt,” the Shiroyasha is saying.
Katsura-san’s head seems to twist back over his shoulder. “I don’t know…this is stupid, you’re tired-”
“I’m fine. You need this.”
“I certainly don’t need it-”
“But it’ll feel good. Just shut up for ten seconds, would you?”
The shadows shift, movement happening in the tent. The two figures then blur together [and did the Shiroyasha’s hands just drop to Katsura-san’s waist?].
“Ah,” comes Katsura-san’s voice, sounding pained. “Idiot, that hurts-”
“That’s because you’re too tight. I have to stretch the muscles first.”
“Ow, ow, Gintoki, you’re too rough-”
“Nag, nag, nag! What are you, my mother-in-law? Just go with it. I have magic fingers.”
There are a long few moments of silence, and Takaya has found that his entire body is frozen in mortification. He is able to avert his eyes from the tent, and does so, staring at a scattering of rocks just beyond his foot with enough intensity to make them combust.
“-Oh,” murmurs Katsura-san suddenly. It is not the serious, almost cold tone he has heard the other rattle off orders with. Nor is it the fiery tone in which Katsura-san speaks of freeing Japan.
It’s a disturbingly pleased noise.
“Ah? Ah?” comes the Shiroyasha’s voice again, sounding smug.
“R-right there…”
“Like this?”
The rough moan is short, bitten off, but it echoes in Takaya’s head over and over as he runs straight back through the camp.
Inside the tent, Katsura sighs, face buried in his folded arms. His voice is now quiet, tired but careful [the moan had been embarrassing enough]. “I’m glad I let you talk me into this,” he admits.
Gintoki grunts absently, his hands digging into Katsura’s lower back and kneading hard, and it’s all Katsura can do not to writhe as weeks of heavy lifting and intense fighting melt away.
One nagging thought keeps the long-haired samurai from relaxing completely, however. “Do you hear anyone out there? I sent someone to bring me the rations list for the next stop...”
“Who did you send?”
“Ah...Takaya-san, the young one recruited at the beginning of the month…”
“That kid? Why would you send a teenager? Ch, they can barely keep their minds off of sex long enough to swing a sword.”
#24 - Hollow
It’s only in murmurs that Gintoki hears it outside of battle, in covert whispers when he passes. They are anxiousthrilledscared when he hears them, expressions like kids playing with an Ouija board, terrified and expectant of the demon they seek to invoke. This, he can ignore.
He cannot ignore it after victories, when they chant it, Shiroyasha, Shiroyasha, Shiroyasha, as if he is a beast that has done well. It makes him feel powerful and dangerous; it makes him feel powerless and weak to his own bloodlust and rage.
Even when no one at all utters his namesake, it echoes in his ears, loud and furious when he sharpens his sword and thinks of what they took. As howling as it is then, it is just as soft and poisonous when he is on the edge of sleep, just teetering into a nightmare that is only slightly different from what day-to-day war is like.
Shiroyasha.
Shiroyasha.
“Gintoki,” calls a clear voice, and it’s like pouring cold, cold water into a steaming hot pot. The whispersmurmurschants fade into the air, just grey vapors and haze and nothing substantial. “Gintoki,” Zura says again, catching up to him. The other samurai adds something, about inns or weather conditions, it doesn’t matter, and he makes an ambiguous noise in response, just to be sure [just to hear it again].
“Gintoki,” chides Zura in a gentle scold [and finally, he remembers who he really is].
#25 - Rain
It had been a spectacular failure of a battle. The survivors trickle back to camp, the mud beneath their sandals sucking and thick, making the trek back to their comrades long and tiring. Gintoki is one of them, pushing forward purely on adrenaline [there had been so many this time, five more popping up for each one cut down].
He almost does not see the other man. Picking his way slowly through the roots and sludge from the other direction, Katsura’s dark hair and blood soaked clothes blend him into the scenery. When it does register, Gintoki lets out a pained, frantic laugh of relief. He tries to call out, but his voice is shot. Katsura sees him anyway [the rain had washed his hair of blood stains, made it a bright marker in the wood]. When they get close enough, the white-haired man realizes the other is walking with a limp.
“Are you-” croaks Katsura.
“Nothing serious,” Gintoki returns. “Your leg-”
“Twisted ankle, I don’t…think it’s broken.”
“Should be off it and not screwing around in the woods, then-”
“I couldn’t find you,” says Katsura all in a rush, voice unsteady. “I thought-”
“Don’t,” says Gintoki, because it wasn’t supposed to be like this [and Zura’s eyes weren’t supposed to go dead ever again].
#26 - Regret
They do not go back to camp. In the mud and fog, red eyes meet hazel for only a moment, and then Gintoki is lunging forward, pinning Katsura to a withering oak. The smaller man makes an almost-nothing sound of pain [his ankle, he said he hurt his ankle], but buries his face in the other’s neck fiercely, knuckles going white with the force of his hold on Gintoki’s biceps.
Their cold fingers are numb and clumsy, but between the two of them they manage to undo their breastplates. Katsura pulls off his forearm guards with his teeth, the action so unexpected of Zura that it makes Gintoki’s blood burn; the guards fall into the mud alongside the other armor at their feet [all those hard outer barriers unneeded and unwanted here].
His ankle, thinks Gintoki again, and with that he picks the other up and grips him by the thighs, holding him up against the tree, all his protesting muscles ignored. Katsura wraps his legs around Gintoki’s waist, and blood-splattered kimonos are shucked up high and out of the way. They move together hard and desperate, Katsura’s soft, low moans vibrating against his jaw. Gintoki wants to kiss him but can’t because the stupid inky-black hair is everywhere and Katsura won’t stay still long enough. It’s no loss; it wouldn’t be good now anyway, he reasons in some part of his mind that isn’t completely focused on grinding Zura into the damn bark of the oak [Gintoki doesn’t want to taste fear and regret and foreign blood, he just wants to taste Zura].
Katsura gets there first, the fingernails of one hand gouging back into the tree for purchase, choking out a Gintoki which sounds so overwhelmed that Gintoki is almost certain that this is the first time Zura has ever come. With that thought Gintoki follows quickly after [his first time with another person ever, and it’s some kind of cosmic joke that the Shiroyasha is as inexperienced as any new recruit just facing down puberty].
For a few moments, the only thing they need to worry about is catching their breath [until Gintoki’s arm muscles finally give out, and they both drop down into the mud, and Katsura squawks like an irritated bird, and Gintoki can’t help but laugh and-
-and maybe, maybe they’ll be okay].
#27 - Snakes
“People do that?” Zura had asked, somewhere between aghast and baffled. Gintoki had simply nodded [because he didn’t trust himself to say anything and probably blow, pardon the pun, his chances]. Zura had remained unconvinced, insisting that he knew this was all another cruel joke upon his person, like the time they had tried to convince him that women farted, of all things [and sometimes, Gintoki finds it hard to convince himself that he’s not taking advantage of someone with brain damage when they do whatever it is they’re doing now].
It takes stumbling into not one, but two separate whores’ dens and a talk with Sakamoto that leaves the taller samurai laughing so hard he actually vomits before Zura believes that people do, indeed, do that.
“You want to do that to me?” he’d then demanded, somewhere between disgusted and mortified. Gintoki had then chosen his words very, very carefully [because even in normal conversation, the wrong turn of phrase could become a free ticket to a bony knee in the groin].
“I want whatever you want,” he’d replied stoically, rather proud of his quick evasive maneuvering [especially when his first thought was No, you idiot, I want you to do that to me nine times a day and once more for good luck].
As they return from washing the company’s clothes in the river, Gintoki stops mid-rant about the difference between “volunteering” and “volunteering other people who hate washing” when Zura blurts, hidden behind his stack of drying yukata and kimono, “I want to do that thing people do.”
Gintoki doesn’t drop his pile of significantly less clean clothes [but even if he did, their descent would have been stopped about halfway down].
Although Zura protests that they have garments to hand back out, he doesn’t put up any physical fight as Gintoki drags him straight back to their tent, and that’s good enough for him. “It doesn’t matter, it doesn’t matter, samurai are noble spirits, born to be unfettered by trivial, material things, such as clothes,” he rambles, practically tripping over every single root in the entire forest. He tugs Zura along behind him as if they are being chased, practically giving the other man whiplash when he shoves him into the tent. “Speaking of, you should start getting unfettered if we’re gonna do this.” When the shorter man makes no movement but to place his bundle neatly in the corner of the tent, Gintoki takes matters into his own hands, pulling him back by the neck of his kimono. The action loosens it quite conveniently, and he immediately dips his hand beneath the fabric, making Zura arch against him very nicely and cry-
“-Cold hands! Cold hands!”
“What? I’m warming them up.”
“They’re like ice, get off me-”
“Get you off?”
“No, would you stop- are you even- damnit Gintoki-” Katsura grates out, and it sets off warning bells in Gintoki’s head, because that is the damnit Gintoki that precedes a powerful uppercut and not the damnit Gintoki that precedes Zura squirming restlessly in his lap. While pissing off Zura is, without a doubt, one of Gintoki’s preferred pastimes, even he can recognize this is absolutely not the time.
He releases the other, but doesn’t give him enough of a pause to get his bearings [this will be a lot less painful for both of them if he keeps the ball rolling]. His strategy of attack is flawless, one he has been working on during long treks from one region to another since the beginning of the damn- well, the time frame doesn’t matter, the point is that he put a lot of effort into being prepared. He knows he’ll have to bite the bullet first, but once he convinces Zura of the great things other people do by way of mind-blowing orgasm, the faster they’ll get to do the great things other people do on a daily basis.
As needed for his plan, Gintoki drops his voice to something he hopes is seductive. “Guess I’m just looking forward to polishing your katana, if you know what I-”
“Ah,” interrupts Zura, somewhere between embarrassed and- no, he’s just embarrassed, the bridge of his nose practically scarlet. “Ah, I thought...I would rather...”
-the pause is painfully long, and painfully awkward-
“...put my mouth on your, ah, you know, than attend to our weaponry.”
The noise of Gintoki’s brain screaming You are so, so retarded! How have you lived this long, how has someone so retarded lived this long?! cannot command even a little of his attention, as his Ah-You-Know is only allowing him to focus on the phrase, “his mouth.”
His mouth.
His mouth.
His mouth.
“-Gintoki?”
“Allsxhk,” says Gintoki [whose plan did not account for this little turn of events].
Zura frowns. “If you don’t want-”
“I want,” replies Gintoki quickly [probably too eagerly]. He doesn’t fully understand why Zura would rather do it this way, but assumes it’s just another one of the other man’s stupid quirks [like why he seems to be okay with having Gintoki’s hand rubbing between his legs but not with letting Gintoki see him completely nude].
Unfortunately, Zura’s expression seems more doubtful now, and Gintoki becomes aware of a little timer starting up, marking the closing window of opportunity. “Too much talking,” he decides abruptly, and pulls the other man in for a hard kiss. His hands brush the green kimono off Zura’s shoulders, exposing that pale scraped and bruised skin, his insistent tongueteethlips not giving the idiot the chance to complain about the temperature of his fingers [honestly, of course his hands are cold, his blood circulation is a little derailed right now].
They kiss deeply for a while, bodies shifting awkwardly in the small tent until they fit right, with Zura lying stretched out on top of him [light as a damn feather, and maybe he should stop stealing the shorter man’s dumplings when he isn’t looking]. When an unhurried pushing of hips begins accompanying the clashing of mouths, the blunt, indirect contact feels perfect, slowly teasing them both into a higher state of arousal. But the thought of how a hand [or a mouth] would feel, of course, makes it pale in comparison, and the more Gintoki thinks about that, the quicker the lazy slide of their hips goes from feeling just right to just not enough.
It’s a nice surprise when, for once, Zura seems to be on the same page [rather than in an entirely different book, written in another language, and full of upside-down illustrations]. Long, thin fingers begin undoing the ties of his pants without even being prompted, and Gintoki lifts his legs and wriggles [like a particularly energetic salmon] to kick them off.
While it’s mildly alarming to realize Zura is giving the same look to Gintoki’s crotch that he gives to the wooden practice targets he drills arrows into with pinpoint accuracy, Gintoki can appreciate the focus. He can also appreciate the way Zura’s kimono is pooling around his waist, and how mussed and messy the dark hair looks from running his fingers through it. By far the best part, however, is the high, desirous flush on Zura’s face, and the constant contact, fervent and wordless-
“Okay, I’m going to do it now,” intones the other man suddenly, so severe and serious that Gintoki actually winces [arrows rapidly thwacking into the dead centre of the, uh, wood, thwunkthwunkthwunk]. “Stop moving around.”
“We...need to work on your dirty talking,” grumbles Gintoki, running a hand through his perm. This will take patience, yes, patience he does not have. “Or maybe not talking at all?”
Zura frowns. “I didn’t think you could talk when, ah, because of your teeth-”
Hand flapping frantically, Gintoki cuts him off with a strangled noise before Zura can deliver a one-hit kill to his sex drive. “No! Shut up! Just follow the rules of the civilized table! It’s impolite to talk with your mouth full! We don’t need to get into specific mechanics of why!”
“Don’t shout at me.”
“I’m not shouting at you! I’m just shouting!”
The frustrated exhale of breath is the only warning Gintoki has before Zura’s mouth crushes against his, kiss almost brutal in intensity. When he pulls back again, the other samurai looks decisive, if embarrassed. “...Relax,” he murmurs, which is so ironic coming from Zura of all people it’s almost obnoxious. Hesitant hands then skim up and down Gintoki’s thighs, becoming bolder with each sweep [and maybe this won’t take as much patience as he thought].
When Zura shifts, bends down low to follow the trailing of his fingers with his lips, his hair slides off his shoulders and onto Gintoki’s belly. The white-haired man smirks lazily, almost lewdly [oh, he likes how it looks there].
The brushing of lips turns into light scrapes of teeth, which become gentle bites, and by the time the other samurai makes it down to the juncture of hip and thigh, Gintoki is almost uncomfortably aroused.
“So, are you gonna go ahead and, because that would be really nice right about-”
“Y-yes. Be quiet.” He’s certain [mostly certain] that the idiot doesn’t know his breath is puffing across somewhere pretty sensitive to drafts. But then his focus narrows drastically when he feels a hesitant lick to the head of his erection. Two, three, four more wet swipes, each longer than the last, have his whole spine tensing.
“Ngh,” he blurts, and Zura looks up at him, hand wrapping around the base of the straining flesh as he licks his lips [he’s not trying to be sexy, Gintoki knows, Zura wouldn’t know how to try to be sexy- which somehow makes it even sexier]. The other man bows his head, slipping his mouth down, past the head and down the hard ridge, and Gintoki lets out a harsh breath. He can scarcely believe this is even happening, and his hand twitches, finally settling on the back of Zura’s head [lightly, as if wary of spooking the other].
And oh, it’s good. It’s a little unsure, just the other side of clumsy, but it’s tightwethot, it’s the best fucking thing Gintoki has ever felt in his life [even better than a soak in a hot spring after a hard battle or a long piss after downing a whole bottle of sake]. It looks just as erotic as it feels; the messy hair, the rumpled kimono, the swollen mouth- it’s an unfathomably dirty pin-up come to life. “Zura,” he groans, hips jerking as he feels all of Zura’s experimentations; that small, quick little tongue lapping at the underside of his cock, then dragging up slowly back to the head, the fingers around him squeezing and stroking. It’s heaven and hell and he never wants it to end. He’s only dimly aware that his mouth has been moving, mumbling profanity and nonsense. “Oh shit, oh, yeah, goddamn… Zura…like that, just, uhhn, oh-”
“Oh shit-!”
“Goddamn, I know, right?- Uhnn, mm.”
The wonderful, wonderful slide of Zura’s lips stops abruptly, freezing in place with a pleasing suction which feels amazing enough that it takes far too many more seconds for Gintoki to realize it hadn’t been his voice, or Zura’s voice, that had contributed just then.
“Ahahahahaha?” offers Sakamoto vacantly, who seems to be completely paralyzed at their tent flaps. Zura is suddenly moving away from Gintoki as if the white-haired samurai had been cursed with leprosy on top of the perm.
“Get the fuck out!” snaps Gintoki, not even daring to look over at Zura, who is going to be cycling from embarrassment to suicide to rage as soon as the horror wears off.
“Ahahahahaha?” the tallest samurai responds, his idiotic mug completely frozen in a grin or grimace . “Gintoki had a snake bite, right? It must have been a snake bite.”
“ARE YOU DEAF IN ADDITION TO BEING STUPID? I SAID GET THE FUCK OUT-”
“Katsura was sucking the poison out. Ahahahahha. Right? What a good friend. Ahahaha. Hahaha.”
“SAKAMOTO-”
“Well, ahahaha, I need to go walk to the nearest village and make out with every woman there, so I’ll just be going-”
“Oh my god,” moans Zura, small and traumatized. “Oh my god. Seppuku. Seppuku. Cut off my head.”
“Nobody’s getting head, ahahaha, it’s just a snake bite, ahahaha, wow-”
After he chases the idiot halfway across their encampment, he comes back to find Zura has drawn his sword and has given him the option of going to sleep outside, or going to sleep forever.
“Let me in! I could get bitten by a fucking snake!” Gintoki shouts.
#28 - Water
It takes a few weeks for him to realize that Zura never kisses him first. It’s a stupid thing to think about, but once Gintoki’s conscious of the fact he can’t let it go. From then on, it returns to gnaw at it in his mind every time they twine together in the dark of an inn, hands wandering [mindful of new stitches, of healing wounds and tender bruises]. It still surprises the hell out of Gintoki when Zura initiates the first touch, be it light fingertips lingering on his wrist or a distinctly more x-rated touch below the belt as the inn-room door closes behind them.
Perhaps that surprise is what kept him from noticing that it’s always him who closes the space between their lips, him who leans down, hands cupping that willful jaw line or tangling themselves into night-black hair.
When weeks turn into months, Gintoki doesn’t quite forget about it, but he stops caring [as long as he isn’t turned away, as long as his kiss is allowed, he’ll drink in Zura in whatever ways he can].
#29 - Green
No one in the company seems to want to make eye-contact with him, the first day Sakamoto’s laughter is absent from the rank and file. While they are dismantling their tent to move under the cover of darkness to the next safe encampment, he says as much to Gintoki. The white-haired samurai snorts, reaching over and pushing Katsura’s hachimaki into his eyes. “No shit, nobody can make eye contact with you,” mumbles the other man, sounding somewhere between irritated and uninterested. “You’ve been staring at the damn sky all day.”
It sinks in for Katsura, then, that he can’t recall anything about today but the pale purple dawn and the gray-blue, rainy season skies of the afternoon. Before the cloth of his headband had obscured his sight, he’d been looking at the navy solitude of the evening blue as he spoke.
When he pushes his hachimaki up out of his eyes, it is at Gintoki he looks, who is struggling with the hide of the tent. “I...” he starts, but has no idea what he wants to say. He’s happy that Sakamoto has found something he believes in, certainly does not begrudge him his decision to fight in his own way. Although he misses him already, privately and somberly, he knows that isn’t what his mind has been trying to come to grips with, either.
A frustrated grunt snaps him out of his thoughts, and he watches blankly as Gintoki simply kicks down their tent, trampling it flat. Then silence hangs between them in the clearing, oppressive and confusing.
Katsura frowns, feeling as if he has done something wrong, but isn’t sure what. “Gintoki-” he tries again.
“Don’t be envious of him,” Gintoki suddenly snaps, cutting him off [voice sharp and alert, like it is in battle], “just because he got out of the shit we’re knee-deep in.” The deep red eyes that turn on him are fierce and focused. “Don’t doubt yourself or act like a hopeless coward. You belong with-” he stops, running a hand through his hair and dropping his head.
When he looks back up, the fire is gone from his eyes. “You belong here,” he finishes, sounding tired.
[The near miss raises too many questions, so they roll up the tent in silence.]
#30 - Winter
Little supplies dwindle to no supplies as sure as the season withers. The company moves quickly, now, too quickly- they have no time to sleep, no time to burn their dead. Even though they have run out of food and they have run out of time, there seems to be an unending amount of strife to go around. Still, they trudge on and on [and their sandal thongs dig deeper into the bloody grooves rendered in their feet].
It has taken days to shake off their pursuers, days that seem like weeks and leave a taste like cowardice in all their mouths. It’s the sensible thing to do; they don’t have the strength or manpower to battle that persistent force yet [but pride has rarely, if ever, been a sentiment ruled by reason]. Gintoki finds Katsura sitting in the frozen dirt next to a stream, his back curled over, sword tucked tight to his side. The taller samurai snaps twigs underfoot as he approaches, tramples every crinkling leaf [everyone is high strung, and warnings come few].
Zura doesn’t talk much these days, so he doesn’t greet Gintoki as he comes up beside him. His eyes flicker briefly over in acknowledgement [but he looks through him instead of at him, and it makes Gintoki’s temper snap like piano wire]. “Get up,” he hisses at the other man, grabbing his forearm [Zura didn’t belong in the dirt, Zura was the purest of them all, and he was better than that]. Although he tries not to take the resulting flinch personally, he yanks the other man to his feet with more force than he’d intended. “We’re sparring,” he spits.
When the shorter man shakes his head, Gintoki ignores him, throwing his sword to the ground beside them [maybe it would have been different if he’d said something, said anything, but it’s as if Zura’s vocal cords are constricted with ice]. Katsura haltingly follows suit, and his scabbard has barely hit the grass before Gintoki takes the first lunge, a fast punch.
As unresponsive as he’s been, Zura’s autopilot still doesn’t disappoint; he skillfully dodges the wild throw, rolling his weight in such a way that the foot coming around to slam into Gintoki’s chest is nothing but natural progression. The white-haired samurai stumbles back only for a moment, trying to narrow his focus enough to beat Zura’s agility [drawing on the frustration that prickles underneath his skin, and the infuriating silence].
Eventually, the sheer force of the constant onslaught overwhelms Zura just enough for Gintoki to get past the alarmingly swift reflexes, and he manages to get the other in a headlock. His skin is cold to the touch, the sharp line of his jaw digging into Gintoki’s forearm a freezing jab of bone. When thin fingers wrap around his arm, jagged nails biting, he thinks of icicles.
A noise escapes on the end of a puff of air that lingers in front of them, and the taller man panics for a moment [he’s breathing cold, he’s breathing cold, it’s too late]. Reality finally picks up the slack when Zura coughs softly, “Hurting me.” Only then does he realize just how tightly his arm had been wrapped around Zura’s neck, and [half-relieved, half-ashamed] he lets go. Before the other man can distance himself, Gintoki pulls him into his arms, not letting go until he can feel some evidence of warmth in the other man’s body.
The winter inside Zura is getting so much fiercer [but he’s going to thaw it, he’s going to melt it away, with his own hot blood if he needs to].
#31 - Hope
It will be the last battle. The thought weighs heavy on every mind and every sword. Gintoki and Katsura stand atop the last hill to be crossed, and Gintoki is doing his damndest to concentrate on the puffy white clouds above [rather than the black, oncoming carnage below].
“That one looks like my hair,” he mutters out of something like habit [he doesn’t really expect Zura to smile anymore, it’s an almost impossible task].
Katsura is looking straight down the rolling grass, into the shuffling ranks of samurai, his expression tight. “It’s not going to be enough,” he murmurs, a ghost of a breath. Gintoki sighs, because he should have known better. He makes one last ditch attempt to keep them from the moment he knows is coming.
“Aa, and that one looks like-”
“Gintoki, shut up,” interrupts Zura, who is turning those honest cry-for-the-world eyes on Gintoki now, as expected. What the taller samurai doesn’t expect is for the other to set aside his invincible personal bubble so freely, to step close enough to Gintoki that he can smell this morning’s meager breakfast on his breath. “If, that is...I just want-” Katsura cuts himself off, shaking his head. Then, it is he that leans up, lips brushing chapped and nervous over Gintoki’s, and Gintoki-
-looks away.
Honest eyes are lowered, but Gintoki grips the other’s wrist, over a worn forearm guard. “After the fight,” he says, because he does not intend to die today [and even if Zura isn’t so convinced, he has hope in tomorrow].
#32 - Lost
Zura won’t stop babbling, his words slurred and tripping over themselves [tumbling down like foolish, foolish samurai, all in a row]. Next to Gintoki’s ear, his breath is ragged, panting out, “I can walk, putmedown, dow-nn, I canstill, Gintoki, I need to fightdon’tyouunderstandGin-toki, it’s not over, for SenseiGintokiandJapan, we have to kuh-eep fightingput me down, it’s not over-” and Gintoki feels like screaming just so he doesn’t have to listen to the blood-loss delirium.
He doesn’t know a lot of things. He doesn’t know what happens, now that they’ve lost. He doesn’t know who is left alive, and who has been slaughtered. He doesn’t know if this war mattered. He doesn’t know if Zura’s going bleed out all down his back in a slick, hot trail of yearning and loss.
But he knows it is over, and he knows he can’t [won’t] live like this anymore.
Part II.
Fandom: Gintama
Rating: G to NC-17.
Pairing: Gintoki/Katsura.
Word Count: 18,461.
Disclaimer: Gintama is not mine.
Feedback: Much obliged.
Notes: Ginzura and Co through the years; for legein. 50-prompt theme set taken from 1sentence [although I did a lot more than one sentence and broke every rule but "write stuff"].
Notes II: These were written a rrrrrreally long time ago, so beware of canon incongruities! I've decided to leave them as is for posterity.
X-posted at gintama and gintama_yaoi.
#01 - Air
The dojo is small and old, but it isn’t musty, it isn’t claustrophobic [it isn’t anything like the place he once lived]. There is a gentle warmth tucked in the whorls of aged wood that he has never before experienced.
Katsura’s small hands tighten on the edge of his kimono [and nervously, excitedly, he breathes in air that feels fresh and alive for the very first time].
#02 - Apples
Gintoki is not homesick. He isn’t thinking about his grandmother, who had been a clever, sprightly old hag [right up until the very end]. He isn’t thinking about the relaxed routine he’d grown so used to, the comfort of his little, cluttered room, or the favourite climbing-trees he’d left behind.
He misses the apples, that’s all. Everyone knows the apples in the country are best.
#03 - Beginning
“Sensei,” calls out a boy next to him. He has strange, puffed-out white hair and a lazy drawl of a voice. “Sensei, why is that girl here? Aa, I thought only men could be samurai. I don’t want to train with a stupid girl. She’s not even that pretty.” There are a few moments of silence while the horror dawns upon Katsura that the boy’s finger is pointing at...him.
“Sensei, she’s blushing. I don’t want to train with a stupid blushing girl who probably is just here to find a husband anyway-”
Under the gob-smacked, frozen look of his new mentor and the laughing eyes of the class, something that Katsura has held firmly within check finally snaps.
After the two are pried apart, Gintoki’s seat is moved to the back of the class, and Katsura spends the rest of their first lesson in a puddle of shame.
[It’s the beginning of something, anyway.]
#04 - Bugs
It seems that no matter how quickly Katsura moves, how attentive he is to catch the very first call of Bed time!, he is unable to change the location of his futon. Every night, he ends up sandwiched between sprawling Gintoki and smelly Kugimiya, and it is hard to say which one of them is worse.
Of course, that tough decision changes after the evening Katsura silently watches a twitching, beetle-like creature emerge from Kugimiya’s futon and crawl towards his.
“Shove over,” grunts Gintoki sleepily, as Katsura edges onto his mat for the third time in as many minutes. “You’re crowding me.”
#05 - Morning
Shoyou revels in the minutes just before the first call to wake.
They are peaceful moments, in which he simply walks through the well-worn dojo and sips his green tea. With the boys still asleep, there is a lingering feeling of anticipation, of dormant excitement about to renew itself at a moment’s notice.
Perhaps that is what he loves best; that every morning, no matter the season, is spring [though his students, he thinks with a chuckle as he hears the first few disgruntled, clumsy noises, were anything but morning glories].
#06 - Dark
Gintoki really likes the other’s hair. It doesn’t occur to him that this might be weird [and if it did occur to him, it’s not like he would actually care that it might be]. Zura’s hair is everything his wild, spongy perm is not; it’s sleek and soft, black as the nightfall outside. He has even begun to look forward to the thunderstorms that make the calm, quiet boy shake with anxiety.
“Come on, you big baby,” he whispers, moving over on his futon.
Katsura blushes fiercely, looking defensive, but complies all too readily to give his statement any weight. “I’m not scared-”
“I don’t care, just get in. You’re keeping me awake with your whimpering.”
“I wasn’t whimpering! Your futon has crumbs in it. That’s gross. Why were you eating on your futon?”
“...Otomo-san says I have low blood sugar and I need to have cookies in bed.”
“Liar.”
“Shut up and go to sleep!”
When Katsura is dozing fitfully against his side, Gintoki buries his nose in the dark strands. It even smells nice.
#07 - Despair
Takasugi and Gintoki are brawling again. Katsura knows that they, along with anyone within a fifteen foot radius including himself, will get hall-wiping duty if the fight escalates much farther. Gintoki is already bleeding from the nose when, steeling himself, Katsura gets between them. “Stop it, you’re going to get in-”
Gintoki suddenly sneezes explosively, blood and boogers splattering across Katsura’s cheek. “Oh,” says the white-haired boy. “Sorry. If stupid Takasugi didn’t-”
“You deserved that, you idiot permhead-”
“What did you call me-”
With Katsura now catatonic in disgust, the fight rages on [and yes, they all end up with hall-wiping duty].
#08 - Doors
Katsura frowns. “What do you mean, ‘It’s stuck?’”
The white-haired boy gives the pantry door another shake. “I mean, it’s the opposite of opening, stupid,” he huffs. Frown deepening, Katsura vacillates between panic [at being caught], shame [at being talked into sneaking into the pantry and caught], and a stubborn level headedness [at solving the problem presented to them, which is figuring out how to not get caught sneaking into the pantry].
“You know,” he murmurs, sitting primly on a sack of flour, “Kojima said this pantry was haunted.”
“Ah-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha,” replies Gintoki, waving a hand quickly back and forth, as if to fan the words right out of the air like a particularly offensive fart. “Kojima’s a moron, ah-ha-ha-ha-ha, I mean, as if anybody with half a brain believes in ghosts-”
The black haired boy toes a bag of peas onto the floor with a sudden, heavy whomp!, and Gintoki screams.
The door doesn’t stay stuck for long [nor does it stay attached to the door frame].
#09 - Drink
It’s the kind of sky that unfurls like a bright parasol, wide and vivid above. Otomo-san, the housekeeper, idly reads off to the side of the pond, while the samurai-to-be are an exercise in juvenile hyperactivity.
Zura, shy and subdued, is wading just beyond the banks with Matsuo [talking about whatever Zura talks about with other people]. Gintoki, high up on a rock, does not make the amateur mistake of calling out ‘canon ball.’ He is silent as a broken noisemaker as he leaps over the water, aiming as closely to the shallow end as he dares.
The resulting splash is nothing to sneeze at [although Katsura does, at length, thanks to the water now clogging up his entire respiratory system].
“Zuraaa,” calls Gintoki, floating on his back, the picture of tranquility. “The water’s not for drinking.”
It takes Katsura ten minutes to coherently sputter and cough his real name back [and by then Gintoki has already forgotten about the whole affair entirely].
#10 - Duty
There are few things that Katsura holds in higher regard than Sensei’s teachings. He’s not like stupid Gintoki, falling asleep in the back of the class, then begging homework off anyone with ears. Katsura works diligently, trying his hardest to pay attention to every moment of the lesson. Sometimes, he worries that he is not being diligent enough, and he repeats “duty, duty, duty” in his mind to get back on track.
Unfortunately, when the white haired boy asks him what today’s lesson was about, the smaller boy finds he has absolutely no idea. “Duty?” he hazards.
Gintoki gives him a flat look. “It was not about doodie. What is wrong with you?”
#11 - Earth
Katsura has always liked small, dark spaces. When he was younger [surely, he is mature enough to say that now], his largely empty home had been full of nooks and crannies that afforded all kinds of hiding places for a solitary boy to retreat to. Alone with his imagination, he’d sat in his small spaces, mind drifting far away, his daydreams knowing no boundaries [unlike the ones that outlined his life, the ones that kept the gazes of his parents stopping short of seeing him].
When Gintoki discovers his favourite spot [inside a huge, hollow tree trunk that smells of earth and life] Katsura surprises himself by not being upset about losing his secret, losing his privacy. If anything, he hopes the other boy approves.
The white haired boy sniffs once or twice, and then crams himself into the trunk. “S’kinda like a pirate hide-out,” he says matter-of-factly.
Katsura smiles [he’s never had a first mate before].
#12 - Fall
During their first few kendo lessons, Shouyou had thought he had the fighting styles of the two boys pegged.
Katsura was all form and speed, and Gintoki was all surprise and force; this was not uncommon at all, given their respective temperaments and attention spans. What was uncommon was the difference that began to set in once he’d pitted them against each other. He’d avoided having them spar together to bypass the time he would waste disciplining them [they were an unpredictable duo; inseparable, then at each other’s throats, then joined at the hip again, all in the blink of an eye].
What he saw over the days they worked together was nothing short of intriguing. Most boys coveted their individual skills to keep an edge over their comrades, out of friendly rivalry and competition. However, the two boys seemed to trade their skills easily, without discussion or pause; Gintoki had to match Katsura’s form to block his blows quickly enough, and temper his force so he did not tire first. Katsura, in turn, had to develop a keen sense of surprise in order to strike, and the ability to block the other’s stronger blows successfully. They fought fluidly, their movements seeming almost rehearsed if not for the occasional startled grunt [or slipped-out swear]. Sparring against others, Shouyou was pleasantly surprised to see Katsura lunging in a manner characteristic of the white haired boy, and Gintoki’s footwork a direct copy of Katsura’s quick feet.
Today, they are sparringdancingfighting together, and it is Gintoki that falls to the hard floor after a particularly quick succession of hits. The two pant, the exertion of the long fight showing on them both. For a moment, everyone watching holds their breath; Gintoki is an infamous sore loser.
“Ah, jeez that hurt, you stupid wighead. Oi oi, can you show me that backhand-duck-thing?” is all he says, reaching up a hand.
Katsura nods shortly, pulling his friend to his feet, replying neutrally, “You would have seen it coming if your ugly perm wasn’t in your eyes.”
#13 - End
Somehow, no one expects it to be Takasugi. As the boys walk down the road, the short boy lets out a low keen [more like that of a sick animal than anything human]. The keen turns into a low, shuddering groan, that ratchets higher in intensity, until it crashes down again into a sob. Then the sobs keep coming, like waves upon the uncaring shores that are Gintoki’s ears. Walking next to Takasugi, who everyonenoone is glancing at out of the corner of their eyes, Kojima begins to cry, too, unable to hold back anymore in the face of such raw hurt.
The boy beside Gintoki says something, something bitter and unkind, and although Gintoki can’t hear the words over the rage that has been pounding in his brain [sincesincesince-], the sneering mouth serves just fine as a target. Fist clenched so hard the knuckles turn white, he lifts it-
-and stops because of the pale hand that doesn’t touch his shoulder, and the calm, dry voice that isn’t chiding him.
Gintoki slows his mindless, mechanical gait and drops back in the group, then drops behind it, where Zura trails, the very last of the pack. His face is turned towards the ground.
“Zura,” the taller boy slurs [as if he’s forgotten how to speak]. Katsura looks up automatically and he isn’t crying; he isn’t anything at all. The hazel eyes are empty, bottomless. Gintoki has never seen the other boy retreated so far into himself. He hates it. He hates them. The dojo they’re headed to, the revolutionaries’ den, is where he’ll be able to make them pay for his dead teacher, and for Zura’s dead eyes.
Taking the other boy’s hand to pull him along, Gintoki’s voice is rough. “We need to stay together,” he says. He means with the group [as the open road is treacherous and there is a great safety in great numbers], but Katsura’s hand tightens, and it means something else entirely.
They do not separate until they reach the dojo.
#14 - War
Despite the popular belief that, immediately following birth, children from the country are thrown into saddles, Gintoki has never ridden a horse before. Frankly, he doesn’t trust them very much, doesn’t even like them [unlike Katsura, who has been blushing and unresponsive since the big-nostril beasts had been led out of the stable]. The white-haired man heaves a sigh; the stupid, smelly things are necessary, if they are ever to catch up to their new company.
“Her nose is so soft,” gasps Zura. “I’m going to name her Chrissie.” He swings up into ‘Chrissie’s’ saddle like he has been doing it all his life, which rankles when it takes Gintoki eight tries to seat himself.
It seems too simple, but just like that, to the sound of hooves and swearing at faulty stirrups, the boys are off to war.
[It gives Gintoki no little satisfaction that, after they discover the joys of ‘saddle burn,’ Chrissie’s name is changed to something far less cute.]
#15 - Roses
“It’s like having a little brother,” Katsura blurts suddenly, with that familiar half-daydreaming, half-urgent tone characteristic of when Katsura has no idea he is speaking aloud. His eyes are on Sakamoto, who is walking alongside the supply cart ahead in grand strides [he seems taller every day now]. The younger man seems to be laughing at the donkey’s ears.
Gintoki raises an eyebrow, looking at Katsura out of the corner of his eye, but Katsura only blushes vaguely in embarrassment and says nothing. He then becomes tight lipped and aloof, projecting himself as someone more silent than a mute, baldie monk up in the mountains.
Despite the effort put forth, the image is ruined when the donkey makes a half-hearted attempt to kick the loud, annoying human next to it. Katsura mumbles something not entirely suited to his polite, dull exterior, and hurries his next few steps to separate beast and idiot.
As Gintoki absently watches the other samurai fuss over stupid Sakamoto [“Hahahaha! Sorry, I can’t help it! I’m an ass man! Hahahaha!”], he begins to think about Zura’s accidental admission. Before the thought can even begin to form, however, the stupid wig-head wipes dirt from the idiot’s face, and instead Gintoki is left picturing Katsura in a bright, floral kimono and modestly applied eye shadow, warmly but sternly reminding a much smaller Sakamoto to wash his hands before dinner.
No, he thinks with a slowly creeping horror at himself, it’s not like having a little brother.
It’s like being a parent.
A few minutes later, when Gintoki whaps Sakamoto upside the head and shouts at him to get a job, nobody gets it [which is probably a good thing].
#16 - Food
Katsura does not like to touch or be touched.
It is mostly during meals that Gintoki wonders at this odd, inaccessible part of the other samurai, when everyone is crowding around the low, spitting fire warming their meal pot. In the bum-rush to get a suitable scoop of rice or the heftiest looking pork bun, Katsura’s aversion to touch becomes strikingly apparent. The black haired samurai weaves and dodges in the throng, and when he returns with his bowl he easily ducks even Sakamoto’s friendly out-flung arm.
“Are you going to eat all that?” Gintoki asks, leaning over to inspect the other’s helping.
Katsura looks put-upon, first bite poised in front of his mouth. “Yes.”
“I just want one-”
“No.”
“You can’t eat that big ol’ pork bun by yourself, Zura.”
“It’s not Zura, it’s Katsura-”
“You just don’t have it in you.”
“If you don’t leave me alone you are going to have my foot in your-”
Predictably, the argument turns into a scuffle, which Zura wins because he is an underhanded bastard [and yeah, it’s probably going to screw up Gintoki’s spine forever the way Zura is sitting on it like that, but the contact is solid].
#17 - Grave
Gintoki dislikes Takasugi. He has always disliked Takasugi. He dislikes his smirk, dislikes the way he talks, dislikes the smell of that stupid tobacco pipe.
Zura dismisses their constant fighting as remnants of their childhood, a sign of immaturity. “Grow up,” he mumbles at them when they return from gathering firewood with matching black eyes. Sakamoto laughs, but it’s uneasy, and he quickly engages Takasugi [ruffling his hair and making some crack about getting wood].
They’re not stupid, Zura and Sakamoto; just stupidly kind, stupidly optimistic, stupidly forgiving of those they’re loyal to. Zura labours under the [false] assumption that Takasugi and he are, if not friends, at least comrades, as if the world is some big brotherhood where everyone respects each other. Sakamoto is Sakamoto; who knows what [if] he’s really thinking in that afro, but the effort he puts out to smooth things over, to be friendly with Takasugi, are beyond his usual cheerfully oblivious fare.
The intentions are good and so, so apparent, but that son of a bitch never changes. Takasugi will accept their kindnesses and concern all the while he dismisses them as being weak for it.
“They aren’t like us, Gintoki,” he drawls around his pipe as they share watch, Sakamoto and Zura asleep only a few feet away. The shorter man chuckles, but it’s not a happy sound. “They don’t know rage like we do, ah, Shiroyasha?”
Gintoki starts to hate him that night- when he recognizes all the snarling demons within himself baying at him from Takasugi’s single, all too knowing eye. It is a hate that he knows he cannot do anything but accept [they will always be bound by a grave that was never dug, a body that was never buried, and mourning colours never worn].
#18 - Head
Sakamoto is laughing fit to bust a gut, cheeks flush with drink. The company is in great spirits tonight; yesterday’s battle had been a total victory, with no casualties. “Watch, watch,” the idiot is saying into Gintoki’s ear, too loudly. He does, and lo and behold, just as Sakamoto predicted, it is no time at all before a bolder pair of village girls wander up to the table where Zura and Takasugi sit drinking. It is a common occurrence- their dark, serious good looks drew the local women in, but the second either of the two men opened their mouths-
-well, the girls quickly realized that maybe one of the louder, less good looking ones would do.
“Who do you think will blow it first, eh, Gintoki?” laughs Sakamoto, looking rather optimistic. “Ahaha, I’ll bet a round on Takasugi!” It makes sense to go with Takasugi, who is a weirdly talkative drunk, rather than Zura, who, sober or smashed, rarely engages the village girls, and is too painfully shy to even flirt in the first place.
But it only takes Gintoki one glance at Zura’s face to know the other is well and truly plastered.
“A round on Zura,” he mumbles over his cup.
“Hahaha! Deal!”
Takasugi is already speaking with them, hands waving in the air a bit drunkenly, the sword-cutting motions he pantomimes making it clear he is talking about their victory. His lips curl in a sneering leer as he recounts the story with just a little too much force, a few too many details not entirely suited for polite conversation, his intense green eyes not even totally focusing on the girls. They begin to look uncomfortable, and Sakamoto practically bounces in his seat beside Gintoki.
“Ahahaha, you should get the barkeep’s attention now, hahaha!”
Zura’s head [which had bowed nervously over his cup when the women had approached] suddenly picks up as he mumbles something, and Gintoki grins. The shorter samurai is now the centre of attention. Zura dislikes being the centre of attention. He’s confessed to Gintoki that he dislikes it so much that when it happens, he often gets-
“Huwwaaaauuugh!”
-nauseous.
He can always count on Zura.
“It must be your lucky day!” chuckles Sakamoto good-naturedly over the screams. The girls look like they could use some comfort, which makes Sakamoto grin even wider. “Ahahaha, or maybe it’s mine!” he adds with a wink, standing up and intercepting the fleeing girls quickly with a, “Hey, hey, you’re both really pretty, I promise I won’t barf on your sandals! -Where are you going? Can I come too?”
It isn’t until Sakamoto is out of sight that Gintoki realizes that idiot bastard didn’t buy him his round. “Zuraaaa!” he shouts across the tavern. “You owe me a round!”
“Okaaay,” calls back Zura fuzzily, wiping his mouth.
#19 - Light
They rush through the undergrowth after the fleeing party of Amanto, twigs snapping under their charging feet [like bones, like triumph]. The gangly, strangely reptilian legs of the creatures are too ungainly on the unfamiliar terrain, and their flight is short lived. When two are felled by arrows, their leader belts an unearthly cry, and the Amanto swing around all at once, tails lashing for balance behind them like rudders. Their foreign movements had once made Katsura uncertain, disturbed by their alien nature. Now, he sees only bodies and motions and weapons unfit to meet the force of a true samurai head on.
The samurai do not stop their charge, not when the beasts snarl, raising axes and throwing sharp, eccentrically shaped projectiles. Katsura weaves and dodges, his naginata held loosely in his hands, an extension of himself as it deflects the whirring thrown weapons. He is the first one to hit the line of Amanto, and he bows low and plunges the long, wicked blade of the naginata into the exposed belly of a creature. With a yell, he braces the pole and rips the blade upwards, lifting the Amanto clear off the ground, letting gravity further cleave it’s entire upper body in two, the spiked rivets of the blade hooking and catching on the jaw bone. He flings the body overhead and sideways, and it falls to the roots and dirt in a ghastly, hemorrhaging heap.
The entire action happens in just a few scant seconds.
Fleeing was the beasts’ only chance at survival.
Near him, Gintoki lets loose a warrior’s shout as he swings his sword in a fast arc, decapitating two Amanto at once. The rest of the skirmish progresses too quickly to keep track of; Katsura expertly cleaves a wide hole in the group with furious, swift swings of his naginata until a lone Amanto manages to slip past it [admittedly, right into his katana]. Takasugi barks something to him that his senses have already processed, and as he withdraws the katana from the ribcage of one Amanto, he thrusts it backwards into the one that had advanced behind him. Stab, duck, slice, impale, breathe, repeat [you have threatened our landslivesideals, and you will not be shown any mercy].
When Katsura wipes the blood from his face, he turns it towards the dawn of the new day [towards the light of the rising sun of Japan].
#20 - Solid
Their entire company is packed like sardines across the floor of an abandoned barn. Katsura knows his body needs rest desperately, but finds his mind whirling, and his eyes staring at the rafters above.
“Come on, you big idiot,” Gintoki whispers near his ear [and even now, Katsura marvels, years later, the other man still has no idea what a real whisper sounds like]. The white-haired samurai peels back the smelly, scratchy blanket, opening it to him.
“I’m not scared,” Katsura murmurs, and he isn’t. But his conviction [everything] feels shaky, these days. How much good are they really doing? Is this really honouring Sensei’s memory? Why don’t the men talk about their plans for after the war, anymore?
“I don’t care, just get in,” comes the lazy drawl, breaking through the waves of doubt, followed by a pair of arms that easily pull Katsura against the taller man’s chest. “You’re keeping me awake with all your thinking.”
“Some people do that, sometimes, thinking,” Katsura sighs back distractedly. The blanket settling back around them seems oddly familiar, the stench of it even more so. He blinks a few times. “This blanket smells like ox. Did you steal this off one of the oxen?”
“...The ox told me it was making him overheat and he paid me 300 yen to take it.”
“Liar.”
“Shut up and go to sleep.”
Katsura’s mouth twitches and surprisingly, his eyelids suddenly do feel heavy , as if taking their cue from the weight of Gintoki’s head on top of his, or the grounding arm slung around his waist. Finally, Katsura rests [even if everything else is shaky and uncertain, Gintoki will always be here, solid and real].
#21 - Secret
Sakamoto knows more than the company thinks he does. It’s pretty funny how that is, so he laughs when he thinks about it [and he laughs at Gintoki’s morning hair, and he laughs at Takasugi’s oral fixation, and he laughs at- well, a lot of things].
Most of the secrets he knows are funny- like that Yoita is afraid of spiders, and will scream like a little girl if you put one in his tent. But not everything is so amusing, and Sakamoto knows unhappy secrets as well- like how Takasugi is slipping further away from them every day, becoming consumed by whatever he hides behind his sneers and bandages. And yes, it seems strange, but even in the midst of this gritty war, he has found out some happy secrets too, like the reason why it is only Gintoki who is able to make Katsura laugh as if he isn’t holding anything back.
It goes without saying that Sakamoto knows his own secrets [and soon, so soon, he’ll find out the secret of what lies out there in the great black void, too].
#22 - Honour
Thanks to Zura’s promotion of rank, they haven’t paid for a drink all night.
“Congratulations, Katsura-san,” says yet another recruit, depositing another round of drinks on the table. Katsura, who as of yet has not refused a single drink on the grounds of being rude, is so drunk at this point all he can do is smile and nod. As the recruit bows and returns to his place at the bar, Zura lifts one of the cups-
-and misses his mouth completely. The sake pours down his jaw into his hair.
“Ahaha,” he chuckles, quiet huffs of normally so hard-earned laughter. “My hair is thirsty.”
For Gintoki, it’s strange and amusing to be on the other side of the sobriety spectrum [he has the unlucky privilege of being one of the watchmen tonight]. “You’re hammered,” he observes fondly.
Zura makes an effort to try and straighten his bizarrely loose posture. “I am not hammering anything,” he replies with great dignity. He’s still smiling, as if it’s not an almost alien expression for his gloomy face [as if he knows it does something indescribable and agitating to the backs of Gintoki’s knees to see it, and is just trying to piss him off, as usual].
“Your tiny brain’ll be hammering tomorrow.”
“No it won’t. S’not tiny.”
“Not as tiny as other things.”
“Mm. What?”
“Ah, you really are plastered, tomorrow you’re going to be such a pain.”
“You’re a pain! And your face’ss …” The shorter man’s face screws up in concentration, and he ends up with “...unfortun'tely proportioned.”
“Such callous words. You’re a nasty drunk, Zura.”
“Katsura.”
“Zura.”
“Katsura!”
“St’p bickering like n’ old married couple n’ pass it,” slurs Takasugi, gesturing vaguely to the bottle at the centre of the table. The shortest samurai is almost as happily wasted as Zura is, because word around camp says he’s next in line for rank advancement [Zura’s good news is his good news; ‘too young’ is not a factor in a war that needs the vibrancy and the will of youth]. Zura tries to hand the sake to him helpfully, but it slides out of his clumsy fingers, upending and rolling towards Sakamoto, who rights it unevenly. His afro almost seems to perk as he gets an idea.
“Ahaha, hey, lets’ do a toast!” cheers the tallest man, ruffling Takasugi’s hair as he laughs. It’s extremely hard to tell how drunk Sakamoto is since the tallest samurai has no inhibitions for booze to lower.
“To what?” murmurs Takasugi, swatting the big hand banging away on the top of his head. “Victory?”
“That’s been done to death,” dismisses Gintoki. “Aa, it’s a jinx, anyway.”
“Ahahaha, how about a toast to getting lucky tonight?”
“That’s even more of a jinx, idiot!”
“To...Shetland ponies...n’ soft manes.”
“You are so goddamned drunk.”
Sakamoto suddenly rises unsteadily, his face bright with glee. “I know! Hahaha, Katsura, Katsura, you should say something!” Zura blushes, shaking his head bashfully [the blush/smile combination making the irritating feeling in Gintoki’s knees spread to the pit of his stomach]. Sakamoto wheedles and cajoles, and [inebriated as he is], Zura’s no match for the sheer force of the other’s charm.
Somehow, he ends up on Sakamoto’s shoulders. His refilled sake cup sways in his hand, spilling alcohol onto Sakamoto’s bushy hair like rain to an eccentric flowerbed. “Listen up, assholes!” shouts Takasugi, drawing the eyes and ears of every samurai in the bar. “Yer new captain’s got something to say!”
“He does?” murmurs Zura dazedly to the side, and Gintoki snorts into his palm.
“Ahahaha, Katsura! Go on, go on!”
Buoyed on an ocean of sake, Zura clears his throat [instead of kneeing Sakamoto in the chin and escaping, as he probably should]. “Ah, hello,” he announces rather amiably, although his cheeks are still a deep red. Hearing his own strange tone, he seems to make a concerted effort to pull his thoughts together. He coughs again, his other hand bracing on Sakamoto’s head like it’s a podium. As he holds his head up higher and looks more alert, a more respectful hush goes over the bar.
“I just want to say…” he finally says at length, and there’s a solemn pause.
Everyone waits for their captain to speak again, to impart his words of wisdom and fan the flames of victory.
“Amanto really suck.”
Sakamoto laughs so much they both topple backwards onto their table, breaking it in two.
#23 - Flexible
Takaya is a new recruit. He is, technically, a little too young to fight [but even young ones have debts to repay]. Perhaps he had just been in the right place at the right time but Katsura-san, the Katsura-san, the Daybreak himself- has entrusted the carrying of the next months’ rations list to him. He clutches the rolled-up paper tightly in his fist as he runs through the encampment, holding it close to his body [as if it were a very fragile egg].
The older samurai’s tent is on the farthest edge of the camp, and he pauses outside to catch his breath. The setting sun casts hazy silhouettes of two figures inside the flimsy animal hide, and Takaya cannot repress a shiver; where Katsura-san is, the fearsome Shiroyasha is never very far. The young man cannot fathom why such different people would spend so much time together, and wonders what the real story is behind it all.
When the shadow of the Shiroyasha moves over the prone, lying outline of Katsura-san, Takaya’s free hand twitches to the hilt of his sword [he immediately feels ashamed; the Shiroyasha is their demon, after all- right?]. “Oi oi, don’t give me that dirty look, it won’t hurt,” the Shiroyasha is saying.
Katsura-san’s head seems to twist back over his shoulder. “I don’t know…this is stupid, you’re tired-”
“I’m fine. You need this.”
“I certainly don’t need it-”
“But it’ll feel good. Just shut up for ten seconds, would you?”
The shadows shift, movement happening in the tent. The two figures then blur together [and did the Shiroyasha’s hands just drop to Katsura-san’s waist?].
“Ah,” comes Katsura-san’s voice, sounding pained. “Idiot, that hurts-”
“That’s because you’re too tight. I have to stretch the muscles first.”
“Ow, ow, Gintoki, you’re too rough-”
“Nag, nag, nag! What are you, my mother-in-law? Just go with it. I have magic fingers.”
There are a long few moments of silence, and Takaya has found that his entire body is frozen in mortification. He is able to avert his eyes from the tent, and does so, staring at a scattering of rocks just beyond his foot with enough intensity to make them combust.
“-Oh,” murmurs Katsura-san suddenly. It is not the serious, almost cold tone he has heard the other rattle off orders with. Nor is it the fiery tone in which Katsura-san speaks of freeing Japan.
It’s a disturbingly pleased noise.
“Ah? Ah?” comes the Shiroyasha’s voice again, sounding smug.
“R-right there…”
“Like this?”
The rough moan is short, bitten off, but it echoes in Takaya’s head over and over as he runs straight back through the camp.
Inside the tent, Katsura sighs, face buried in his folded arms. His voice is now quiet, tired but careful [the moan had been embarrassing enough]. “I’m glad I let you talk me into this,” he admits.
Gintoki grunts absently, his hands digging into Katsura’s lower back and kneading hard, and it’s all Katsura can do not to writhe as weeks of heavy lifting and intense fighting melt away.
One nagging thought keeps the long-haired samurai from relaxing completely, however. “Do you hear anyone out there? I sent someone to bring me the rations list for the next stop...”
“Who did you send?”
“Ah...Takaya-san, the young one recruited at the beginning of the month…”
“That kid? Why would you send a teenager? Ch, they can barely keep their minds off of sex long enough to swing a sword.”
#24 - Hollow
It’s only in murmurs that Gintoki hears it outside of battle, in covert whispers when he passes. They are anxiousthrilledscared when he hears them, expressions like kids playing with an Ouija board, terrified and expectant of the demon they seek to invoke. This, he can ignore.
He cannot ignore it after victories, when they chant it, Shiroyasha, Shiroyasha, Shiroyasha, as if he is a beast that has done well. It makes him feel powerful and dangerous; it makes him feel powerless and weak to his own bloodlust and rage.
Even when no one at all utters his namesake, it echoes in his ears, loud and furious when he sharpens his sword and thinks of what they took. As howling as it is then, it is just as soft and poisonous when he is on the edge of sleep, just teetering into a nightmare that is only slightly different from what day-to-day war is like.
Shiroyasha.
Shiroyasha.
“Gintoki,” calls a clear voice, and it’s like pouring cold, cold water into a steaming hot pot. The whispersmurmurschants fade into the air, just grey vapors and haze and nothing substantial. “Gintoki,” Zura says again, catching up to him. The other samurai adds something, about inns or weather conditions, it doesn’t matter, and he makes an ambiguous noise in response, just to be sure [just to hear it again].
“Gintoki,” chides Zura in a gentle scold [and finally, he remembers who he really is].
#25 - Rain
It had been a spectacular failure of a battle. The survivors trickle back to camp, the mud beneath their sandals sucking and thick, making the trek back to their comrades long and tiring. Gintoki is one of them, pushing forward purely on adrenaline [there had been so many this time, five more popping up for each one cut down].
He almost does not see the other man. Picking his way slowly through the roots and sludge from the other direction, Katsura’s dark hair and blood soaked clothes blend him into the scenery. When it does register, Gintoki lets out a pained, frantic laugh of relief. He tries to call out, but his voice is shot. Katsura sees him anyway [the rain had washed his hair of blood stains, made it a bright marker in the wood]. When they get close enough, the white-haired man realizes the other is walking with a limp.
“Are you-” croaks Katsura.
“Nothing serious,” Gintoki returns. “Your leg-”
“Twisted ankle, I don’t…think it’s broken.”
“Should be off it and not screwing around in the woods, then-”
“I couldn’t find you,” says Katsura all in a rush, voice unsteady. “I thought-”
“Don’t,” says Gintoki, because it wasn’t supposed to be like this [and Zura’s eyes weren’t supposed to go dead ever again].
#26 - Regret
They do not go back to camp. In the mud and fog, red eyes meet hazel for only a moment, and then Gintoki is lunging forward, pinning Katsura to a withering oak. The smaller man makes an almost-nothing sound of pain [his ankle, he said he hurt his ankle], but buries his face in the other’s neck fiercely, knuckles going white with the force of his hold on Gintoki’s biceps.
Their cold fingers are numb and clumsy, but between the two of them they manage to undo their breastplates. Katsura pulls off his forearm guards with his teeth, the action so unexpected of Zura that it makes Gintoki’s blood burn; the guards fall into the mud alongside the other armor at their feet [all those hard outer barriers unneeded and unwanted here].
His ankle, thinks Gintoki again, and with that he picks the other up and grips him by the thighs, holding him up against the tree, all his protesting muscles ignored. Katsura wraps his legs around Gintoki’s waist, and blood-splattered kimonos are shucked up high and out of the way. They move together hard and desperate, Katsura’s soft, low moans vibrating against his jaw. Gintoki wants to kiss him but can’t because the stupid inky-black hair is everywhere and Katsura won’t stay still long enough. It’s no loss; it wouldn’t be good now anyway, he reasons in some part of his mind that isn’t completely focused on grinding Zura into the damn bark of the oak [Gintoki doesn’t want to taste fear and regret and foreign blood, he just wants to taste Zura].
Katsura gets there first, the fingernails of one hand gouging back into the tree for purchase, choking out a Gintoki which sounds so overwhelmed that Gintoki is almost certain that this is the first time Zura has ever come. With that thought Gintoki follows quickly after [his first time with another person ever, and it’s some kind of cosmic joke that the Shiroyasha is as inexperienced as any new recruit just facing down puberty].
For a few moments, the only thing they need to worry about is catching their breath [until Gintoki’s arm muscles finally give out, and they both drop down into the mud, and Katsura squawks like an irritated bird, and Gintoki can’t help but laugh and-
-and maybe, maybe they’ll be okay].
#27 - Snakes
“People do that?” Zura had asked, somewhere between aghast and baffled. Gintoki had simply nodded [because he didn’t trust himself to say anything and probably blow, pardon the pun, his chances]. Zura had remained unconvinced, insisting that he knew this was all another cruel joke upon his person, like the time they had tried to convince him that women farted, of all things [and sometimes, Gintoki finds it hard to convince himself that he’s not taking advantage of someone with brain damage when they do whatever it is they’re doing now].
It takes stumbling into not one, but two separate whores’ dens and a talk with Sakamoto that leaves the taller samurai laughing so hard he actually vomits before Zura believes that people do, indeed, do that.
“You want to do that to me?” he’d then demanded, somewhere between disgusted and mortified. Gintoki had then chosen his words very, very carefully [because even in normal conversation, the wrong turn of phrase could become a free ticket to a bony knee in the groin].
“I want whatever you want,” he’d replied stoically, rather proud of his quick evasive maneuvering [especially when his first thought was No, you idiot, I want you to do that to me nine times a day and once more for good luck].
As they return from washing the company’s clothes in the river, Gintoki stops mid-rant about the difference between “volunteering” and “volunteering other people who hate washing” when Zura blurts, hidden behind his stack of drying yukata and kimono, “I want to do that thing people do.”
Gintoki doesn’t drop his pile of significantly less clean clothes [but even if he did, their descent would have been stopped about halfway down].
Although Zura protests that they have garments to hand back out, he doesn’t put up any physical fight as Gintoki drags him straight back to their tent, and that’s good enough for him. “It doesn’t matter, it doesn’t matter, samurai are noble spirits, born to be unfettered by trivial, material things, such as clothes,” he rambles, practically tripping over every single root in the entire forest. He tugs Zura along behind him as if they are being chased, practically giving the other man whiplash when he shoves him into the tent. “Speaking of, you should start getting unfettered if we’re gonna do this.” When the shorter man makes no movement but to place his bundle neatly in the corner of the tent, Gintoki takes matters into his own hands, pulling him back by the neck of his kimono. The action loosens it quite conveniently, and he immediately dips his hand beneath the fabric, making Zura arch against him very nicely and cry-
“-Cold hands! Cold hands!”
“What? I’m warming them up.”
“They’re like ice, get off me-”
“Get you off?”
“No, would you stop- are you even- damnit Gintoki-” Katsura grates out, and it sets off warning bells in Gintoki’s head, because that is the damnit Gintoki that precedes a powerful uppercut and not the damnit Gintoki that precedes Zura squirming restlessly in his lap. While pissing off Zura is, without a doubt, one of Gintoki’s preferred pastimes, even he can recognize this is absolutely not the time.
He releases the other, but doesn’t give him enough of a pause to get his bearings [this will be a lot less painful for both of them if he keeps the ball rolling]. His strategy of attack is flawless, one he has been working on during long treks from one region to another since the beginning of the damn- well, the time frame doesn’t matter, the point is that he put a lot of effort into being prepared. He knows he’ll have to bite the bullet first, but once he convinces Zura of the great things other people do by way of mind-blowing orgasm, the faster they’ll get to do the great things other people do on a daily basis.
As needed for his plan, Gintoki drops his voice to something he hopes is seductive. “Guess I’m just looking forward to polishing your katana, if you know what I-”
“Ah,” interrupts Zura, somewhere between embarrassed and- no, he’s just embarrassed, the bridge of his nose practically scarlet. “Ah, I thought...I would rather...”
-the pause is painfully long, and painfully awkward-
“...put my mouth on your, ah, you know, than attend to our weaponry.”
The noise of Gintoki’s brain screaming You are so, so retarded! How have you lived this long, how has someone so retarded lived this long?! cannot command even a little of his attention, as his Ah-You-Know is only allowing him to focus on the phrase, “his mouth.”
His mouth.
His mouth.
His mouth.
“-Gintoki?”
“Allsxhk,” says Gintoki [whose plan did not account for this little turn of events].
Zura frowns. “If you don’t want-”
“I want,” replies Gintoki quickly [probably too eagerly]. He doesn’t fully understand why Zura would rather do it this way, but assumes it’s just another one of the other man’s stupid quirks [like why he seems to be okay with having Gintoki’s hand rubbing between his legs but not with letting Gintoki see him completely nude].
Unfortunately, Zura’s expression seems more doubtful now, and Gintoki becomes aware of a little timer starting up, marking the closing window of opportunity. “Too much talking,” he decides abruptly, and pulls the other man in for a hard kiss. His hands brush the green kimono off Zura’s shoulders, exposing that pale scraped and bruised skin, his insistent tongueteethlips not giving the idiot the chance to complain about the temperature of his fingers [honestly, of course his hands are cold, his blood circulation is a little derailed right now].
They kiss deeply for a while, bodies shifting awkwardly in the small tent until they fit right, with Zura lying stretched out on top of him [light as a damn feather, and maybe he should stop stealing the shorter man’s dumplings when he isn’t looking]. When an unhurried pushing of hips begins accompanying the clashing of mouths, the blunt, indirect contact feels perfect, slowly teasing them both into a higher state of arousal. But the thought of how a hand [or a mouth] would feel, of course, makes it pale in comparison, and the more Gintoki thinks about that, the quicker the lazy slide of their hips goes from feeling just right to just not enough.
It’s a nice surprise when, for once, Zura seems to be on the same page [rather than in an entirely different book, written in another language, and full of upside-down illustrations]. Long, thin fingers begin undoing the ties of his pants without even being prompted, and Gintoki lifts his legs and wriggles [like a particularly energetic salmon] to kick them off.
While it’s mildly alarming to realize Zura is giving the same look to Gintoki’s crotch that he gives to the wooden practice targets he drills arrows into with pinpoint accuracy, Gintoki can appreciate the focus. He can also appreciate the way Zura’s kimono is pooling around his waist, and how mussed and messy the dark hair looks from running his fingers through it. By far the best part, however, is the high, desirous flush on Zura’s face, and the constant contact, fervent and wordless-
“Okay, I’m going to do it now,” intones the other man suddenly, so severe and serious that Gintoki actually winces [arrows rapidly thwacking into the dead centre of the, uh, wood, thwunkthwunkthwunk]. “Stop moving around.”
“We...need to work on your dirty talking,” grumbles Gintoki, running a hand through his perm. This will take patience, yes, patience he does not have. “Or maybe not talking at all?”
Zura frowns. “I didn’t think you could talk when, ah, because of your teeth-”
Hand flapping frantically, Gintoki cuts him off with a strangled noise before Zura can deliver a one-hit kill to his sex drive. “No! Shut up! Just follow the rules of the civilized table! It’s impolite to talk with your mouth full! We don’t need to get into specific mechanics of why!”
“Don’t shout at me.”
“I’m not shouting at you! I’m just shouting!”
The frustrated exhale of breath is the only warning Gintoki has before Zura’s mouth crushes against his, kiss almost brutal in intensity. When he pulls back again, the other samurai looks decisive, if embarrassed. “...Relax,” he murmurs, which is so ironic coming from Zura of all people it’s almost obnoxious. Hesitant hands then skim up and down Gintoki’s thighs, becoming bolder with each sweep [and maybe this won’t take as much patience as he thought].
When Zura shifts, bends down low to follow the trailing of his fingers with his lips, his hair slides off his shoulders and onto Gintoki’s belly. The white-haired man smirks lazily, almost lewdly [oh, he likes how it looks there].
The brushing of lips turns into light scrapes of teeth, which become gentle bites, and by the time the other samurai makes it down to the juncture of hip and thigh, Gintoki is almost uncomfortably aroused.
“So, are you gonna go ahead and, because that would be really nice right about-”
“Y-yes. Be quiet.” He’s certain [mostly certain] that the idiot doesn’t know his breath is puffing across somewhere pretty sensitive to drafts. But then his focus narrows drastically when he feels a hesitant lick to the head of his erection. Two, three, four more wet swipes, each longer than the last, have his whole spine tensing.
“Ngh,” he blurts, and Zura looks up at him, hand wrapping around the base of the straining flesh as he licks his lips [he’s not trying to be sexy, Gintoki knows, Zura wouldn’t know how to try to be sexy- which somehow makes it even sexier]. The other man bows his head, slipping his mouth down, past the head and down the hard ridge, and Gintoki lets out a harsh breath. He can scarcely believe this is even happening, and his hand twitches, finally settling on the back of Zura’s head [lightly, as if wary of spooking the other].
And oh, it’s good. It’s a little unsure, just the other side of clumsy, but it’s tightwethot, it’s the best fucking thing Gintoki has ever felt in his life [even better than a soak in a hot spring after a hard battle or a long piss after downing a whole bottle of sake]. It looks just as erotic as it feels; the messy hair, the rumpled kimono, the swollen mouth- it’s an unfathomably dirty pin-up come to life. “Zura,” he groans, hips jerking as he feels all of Zura’s experimentations; that small, quick little tongue lapping at the underside of his cock, then dragging up slowly back to the head, the fingers around him squeezing and stroking. It’s heaven and hell and he never wants it to end. He’s only dimly aware that his mouth has been moving, mumbling profanity and nonsense. “Oh shit, oh, yeah, goddamn… Zura…like that, just, uhhn, oh-”
“Oh shit-!”
“Goddamn, I know, right?- Uhnn, mm.”
The wonderful, wonderful slide of Zura’s lips stops abruptly, freezing in place with a pleasing suction which feels amazing enough that it takes far too many more seconds for Gintoki to realize it hadn’t been his voice, or Zura’s voice, that had contributed just then.
“Ahahahahaha?” offers Sakamoto vacantly, who seems to be completely paralyzed at their tent flaps. Zura is suddenly moving away from Gintoki as if the white-haired samurai had been cursed with leprosy on top of the perm.
“Get the fuck out!” snaps Gintoki, not even daring to look over at Zura, who is going to be cycling from embarrassment to suicide to rage as soon as the horror wears off.
“Ahahahahaha?” the tallest samurai responds, his idiotic mug completely frozen in a grin or grimace . “Gintoki had a snake bite, right? It must have been a snake bite.”
“ARE YOU DEAF IN ADDITION TO BEING STUPID? I SAID GET THE FUCK OUT-”
“Katsura was sucking the poison out. Ahahahahha. Right? What a good friend. Ahahaha. Hahaha.”
“SAKAMOTO-”
“Well, ahahaha, I need to go walk to the nearest village and make out with every woman there, so I’ll just be going-”
“Oh my god,” moans Zura, small and traumatized. “Oh my god. Seppuku. Seppuku. Cut off my head.”
“Nobody’s getting head, ahahaha, it’s just a snake bite, ahahaha, wow-”
After he chases the idiot halfway across their encampment, he comes back to find Zura has drawn his sword and has given him the option of going to sleep outside, or going to sleep forever.
“Let me in! I could get bitten by a fucking snake!” Gintoki shouts.
#28 - Water
It takes a few weeks for him to realize that Zura never kisses him first. It’s a stupid thing to think about, but once Gintoki’s conscious of the fact he can’t let it go. From then on, it returns to gnaw at it in his mind every time they twine together in the dark of an inn, hands wandering [mindful of new stitches, of healing wounds and tender bruises]. It still surprises the hell out of Gintoki when Zura initiates the first touch, be it light fingertips lingering on his wrist or a distinctly more x-rated touch below the belt as the inn-room door closes behind them.
Perhaps that surprise is what kept him from noticing that it’s always him who closes the space between their lips, him who leans down, hands cupping that willful jaw line or tangling themselves into night-black hair.
When weeks turn into months, Gintoki doesn’t quite forget about it, but he stops caring [as long as he isn’t turned away, as long as his kiss is allowed, he’ll drink in Zura in whatever ways he can].
#29 - Green
No one in the company seems to want to make eye-contact with him, the first day Sakamoto’s laughter is absent from the rank and file. While they are dismantling their tent to move under the cover of darkness to the next safe encampment, he says as much to Gintoki. The white-haired samurai snorts, reaching over and pushing Katsura’s hachimaki into his eyes. “No shit, nobody can make eye contact with you,” mumbles the other man, sounding somewhere between irritated and uninterested. “You’ve been staring at the damn sky all day.”
It sinks in for Katsura, then, that he can’t recall anything about today but the pale purple dawn and the gray-blue, rainy season skies of the afternoon. Before the cloth of his headband had obscured his sight, he’d been looking at the navy solitude of the evening blue as he spoke.
When he pushes his hachimaki up out of his eyes, it is at Gintoki he looks, who is struggling with the hide of the tent. “I...” he starts, but has no idea what he wants to say. He’s happy that Sakamoto has found something he believes in, certainly does not begrudge him his decision to fight in his own way. Although he misses him already, privately and somberly, he knows that isn’t what his mind has been trying to come to grips with, either.
A frustrated grunt snaps him out of his thoughts, and he watches blankly as Gintoki simply kicks down their tent, trampling it flat. Then silence hangs between them in the clearing, oppressive and confusing.
Katsura frowns, feeling as if he has done something wrong, but isn’t sure what. “Gintoki-” he tries again.
“Don’t be envious of him,” Gintoki suddenly snaps, cutting him off [voice sharp and alert, like it is in battle], “just because he got out of the shit we’re knee-deep in.” The deep red eyes that turn on him are fierce and focused. “Don’t doubt yourself or act like a hopeless coward. You belong with-” he stops, running a hand through his hair and dropping his head.
When he looks back up, the fire is gone from his eyes. “You belong here,” he finishes, sounding tired.
[The near miss raises too many questions, so they roll up the tent in silence.]
#30 - Winter
Little supplies dwindle to no supplies as sure as the season withers. The company moves quickly, now, too quickly- they have no time to sleep, no time to burn their dead. Even though they have run out of food and they have run out of time, there seems to be an unending amount of strife to go around. Still, they trudge on and on [and their sandal thongs dig deeper into the bloody grooves rendered in their feet].
It has taken days to shake off their pursuers, days that seem like weeks and leave a taste like cowardice in all their mouths. It’s the sensible thing to do; they don’t have the strength or manpower to battle that persistent force yet [but pride has rarely, if ever, been a sentiment ruled by reason]. Gintoki finds Katsura sitting in the frozen dirt next to a stream, his back curled over, sword tucked tight to his side. The taller samurai snaps twigs underfoot as he approaches, tramples every crinkling leaf [everyone is high strung, and warnings come few].
Zura doesn’t talk much these days, so he doesn’t greet Gintoki as he comes up beside him. His eyes flicker briefly over in acknowledgement [but he looks through him instead of at him, and it makes Gintoki’s temper snap like piano wire]. “Get up,” he hisses at the other man, grabbing his forearm [Zura didn’t belong in the dirt, Zura was the purest of them all, and he was better than that]. Although he tries not to take the resulting flinch personally, he yanks the other man to his feet with more force than he’d intended. “We’re sparring,” he spits.
When the shorter man shakes his head, Gintoki ignores him, throwing his sword to the ground beside them [maybe it would have been different if he’d said something, said anything, but it’s as if Zura’s vocal cords are constricted with ice]. Katsura haltingly follows suit, and his scabbard has barely hit the grass before Gintoki takes the first lunge, a fast punch.
As unresponsive as he’s been, Zura’s autopilot still doesn’t disappoint; he skillfully dodges the wild throw, rolling his weight in such a way that the foot coming around to slam into Gintoki’s chest is nothing but natural progression. The white-haired samurai stumbles back only for a moment, trying to narrow his focus enough to beat Zura’s agility [drawing on the frustration that prickles underneath his skin, and the infuriating silence].
Eventually, the sheer force of the constant onslaught overwhelms Zura just enough for Gintoki to get past the alarmingly swift reflexes, and he manages to get the other in a headlock. His skin is cold to the touch, the sharp line of his jaw digging into Gintoki’s forearm a freezing jab of bone. When thin fingers wrap around his arm, jagged nails biting, he thinks of icicles.
A noise escapes on the end of a puff of air that lingers in front of them, and the taller man panics for a moment [he’s breathing cold, he’s breathing cold, it’s too late]. Reality finally picks up the slack when Zura coughs softly, “Hurting me.” Only then does he realize just how tightly his arm had been wrapped around Zura’s neck, and [half-relieved, half-ashamed] he lets go. Before the other man can distance himself, Gintoki pulls him into his arms, not letting go until he can feel some evidence of warmth in the other man’s body.
The winter inside Zura is getting so much fiercer [but he’s going to thaw it, he’s going to melt it away, with his own hot blood if he needs to].
#31 - Hope
It will be the last battle. The thought weighs heavy on every mind and every sword. Gintoki and Katsura stand atop the last hill to be crossed, and Gintoki is doing his damndest to concentrate on the puffy white clouds above [rather than the black, oncoming carnage below].
“That one looks like my hair,” he mutters out of something like habit [he doesn’t really expect Zura to smile anymore, it’s an almost impossible task].
Katsura is looking straight down the rolling grass, into the shuffling ranks of samurai, his expression tight. “It’s not going to be enough,” he murmurs, a ghost of a breath. Gintoki sighs, because he should have known better. He makes one last ditch attempt to keep them from the moment he knows is coming.
“Aa, and that one looks like-”
“Gintoki, shut up,” interrupts Zura, who is turning those honest cry-for-the-world eyes on Gintoki now, as expected. What the taller samurai doesn’t expect is for the other to set aside his invincible personal bubble so freely, to step close enough to Gintoki that he can smell this morning’s meager breakfast on his breath. “If, that is...I just want-” Katsura cuts himself off, shaking his head. Then, it is he that leans up, lips brushing chapped and nervous over Gintoki’s, and Gintoki-
-looks away.
Honest eyes are lowered, but Gintoki grips the other’s wrist, over a worn forearm guard. “After the fight,” he says, because he does not intend to die today [and even if Zura isn’t so convinced, he has hope in tomorrow].
#32 - Lost
Zura won’t stop babbling, his words slurred and tripping over themselves [tumbling down like foolish, foolish samurai, all in a row]. Next to Gintoki’s ear, his breath is ragged, panting out, “I can walk, putmedown, dow-nn, I canstill, Gintoki, I need to fightdon’tyouunderstandGin-toki, it’s not over, for SenseiGintokiandJapan, we have to kuh-eep fightingput me down, it’s not over-” and Gintoki feels like screaming just so he doesn’t have to listen to the blood-loss delirium.
He doesn’t know a lot of things. He doesn’t know what happens, now that they’ve lost. He doesn’t know who is left alive, and who has been slaughtered. He doesn’t know if this war mattered. He doesn’t know if Zura’s going bleed out all down his back in a slick, hot trail of yearning and loss.
But he knows it is over, and he knows he can’t [won’t] live like this anymore.
Part II.