FIC: GINTAMA - Fight on a Monday...
Title: Fight on a Monday, Cry on a Tuesday, Throw Up on a Wednesday, but Always Laugh on Saturday & Sunday
Fandom: Gintama
Rating: R
Pairing: Gintoki/Katsura.
Disclaimer: Sally Saw a Silver Souled Samurai by the Sea Shore, and didn't own anything but a speech impediment.
Feedback: A high five, a slap in the face, hit me with it.
Notes: For antimonial. Title from the Radwimps.
Cross-posted at ginzura & gintama.
The morning after, Gintoki realizes he has made a huge mistake. It’s not that he’s worried about the Shisengumi - he’s not, they couldn’t find their own assholes if given explicit instructions, a bloodhound, and a GPS - it’s the principle of it. He’s not running a goddamned hostel, here. And he’s certainly not running a hideout for idiot terrorists with stupid wig hair. How the hell had Zura talked him into this?
Beside him, Zura shifts, the blanket sliding down his bare waist to reveal the slope of his lower back. Gintoki’s eyes drop to it, spacing out.
Ah, right. He’d been talked into it with body language.
He brushes the blanket lower still, taking a few moments to appreciate the view. Then, he braces his foot against that maddening little curve, and shoves, sending Zura tumbling onto the floor.
“Oi oi, wake up. Gin-san wants breakfast.”
-+-+-+-
After enough wheedling, guilting, and cajoling, the other samurai makes those inexplicable pancakes. There’s absolutely no sense to be found in why Zura can make them better than even the Intergalactic House of Pancakes, but there’s never any sense in anything Zura does, so the Yorozuya doesn’t think too much about it. Zura puts his hair back, Gintoki opens this week’s Jump, and things are somewhat peaceful.
When a sleep-ruffled, yawning Kagura slams open her closet door, said peace is resolutely broken. Sitting on the wooden edge, she stares at Zura for a full minute, then bounds out of the compartment, tackling Gintoki’s torso.
“Gin-chan! You finally got me a mommy!”
The white-haired man slams her in the forehead with an open palm, trying to pry her off before she breaks his ribcage. “What’s that supposed to mean, aa!? I’m not your goddamned daddy! You moron! That’s Zura!”
“It’s not Zura, it’s Katsura,” comes from the kitchen.
“Huh. So the ex-yellow curry ninja’s gonna be the mommy?”
“It’s not ex-yellow curry ninja, it’s Katsura.”
“No! Little gorilla brats don’t get mommies, they get put in zoos and laughed at!”
The Yato releases him with a disgusted noise, and Gintoki holds his stomach, gasping for breath. Kagura strides over to Zura [who ceases flipping pancakes and places his spatula to the side, so as not to lose any fingers]. The girl puts her hands on her hips. Zura puts his in his kimono sleeves.
They stare at each other.
“We got a way of life here, ahuh,” says the girl. She’s chewing on non-existent gum to emphasize her tough-girl in-the-know status.
The rebel nods. “I see you are a tough-girl in-the-know.”
“That’s right! And times are hard!”
“Ah.”
“You think you can handle it?” demands Kagura, pointing.
“I am making pancakes,” replies Zura.
The redhead is already holding a plate. She gives Gintoki a thumbs-up. “Mommy approved, yup.”
Gintoki punches her in the head in response. To retaliate, she kicks him in the chest. It escalates into a brawl quickly.
“It’s not mommy, it’s Katsura,” says Zura, but no one is listening.
-+-+-+-
The rebel is skittish the first few days, spending most of his time in Gintoki’s bedroom rather than the front room. He thinks he’s being cautious; Gintoki thinks he’s being a paranoid, anti-social asshole. Not that he cares what Zura does - it’s just annoying.
“What are you, a blossoming hikikomori?” complains the Yorozuya, picking his nose. “That’s stupid. I mean, sure, your hair is greasy enough to pull it off, but still.”
Zura doesn’t look up from the newspaper, spread out on the extra futon in front of him. “You’re stupid and your hair looks like a dirty cotton swab.”
“That’s disgusting, what is with that disgusting imagination of yours, aa? Anyway, you have to get out of here sometime.”
A crinkle of pages precedes the response, “Those sentences are unrelated. Just saying ‘anyway’ isn’t enough of a transition.”
“How about this; if you don’t get out of this room today, I’m going to kick your ass, but I might kick it anyway.”
“You were supposed to use a different transition, not just use ‘anyway’ in a different - wah!” he cuts off as Gintoki kicks his newspaper across the room in a flurry of ink and paper.
Gintoki continues picking his nose. “Oh, hey, sorry, were you reading that?”
The smaller man narrows hazel eyes, glaring up at him. “If this is about trying to hide your smut, I’ve already seen it.”
“ - Why were you in my closet?”
“You should be ashamed.”
“Oi, oi, you should be ashamed! What kind of nosy guest are you, asshole? I bet you go through medicine cabinets at parties.”
“Shut up, what the hell kind of pervert has those kinds of doujin -”
“Healthy young man! Interests!” bursts Gintoki, vaguely pink in the cheeks. “Hinamori-chan brings out the darkest desires in even the most reserved of men.” This is not going anywhere he intended it to. He needs to take control of the situation. “- You shut up.”
“You shut up.”
“You - augh, you shut up! There’s a rerun of your stupid show on.”
“What?”
“‘The Universe’s Most Useless Pets.’”
“It’s ‘The Universe’s Most Endearing Pets,’” sighs the black haired man, getting up to retrieve the scattered mess of his paper, “and they only play reruns on Wednesday.”
Gintoki taps an impatient foot. “It’s a special. For diligent brain-dead viewers only.”
“There’s no special.”
“There could be. How would you know, hikikomori?”
Sitting down on the futon and smoothing out the reclaimed newspaper, Zura goes back to ignoring him. Gintoki searches his brain for an idea. An overturned soba truck in the streets flooded the front room with stupid buckwheat noodles? The birthday gift he’s been begging off on for three years is on the couch? Kondou Isao is helpless and hog-tied on the living room floor?
Aa, would that be gorilla-tied?
This is starting to smack of something that requires effort, so Gintoki gives up. With a fwump, he plops down on the futon behind Zura. Why should he care if the shithead won’t leave his bedroom? Half of the time he can’t even get the idiot into the bedroom -
Gintoki’s eyebrows arch.
“So…” he drawls lowly, leaning over Zura’s back, one hand settling lightly on the rebel’s waist, “you wanna take another look at those doujin? Y’know, together?”
Zura leaves the bedroom.
-+-+-+-
When he returns from a job with Kagura to see Shinpachi lying on one of the couches, flipping through what looks like an Otsuu-chan photobook, he assumes the worst.
“Pattsuan, are your legs broken?” Gintoki gasps.
The boy looks up. “What?”
“Shinpachiiii! Your legs, your legs!” wails Kagura, following Gintoki’s lead. “Now you’ll never be one of Otsuu-chan’s handsome back-up dancers!”
“I told you that in private, Kagura-chan,” replies Shinpachi in a monotone, face dull.
The Yato waves a hand. “A girl shouldn’t concern herself with boys’ privates, yup.”
“What!? In private means you don’t tell anyone!”
“Huh, why would I be telling anyone about your privates in the first place? You sure are full of yourself, Shinpachi-kun, ahuh.”
“Nobody’s talking about privates!”
Gintoki leaves them to it, glancing into his bedroom. There is no gloomy terrorist to be found, but the futons are rolled up, and the floor looks swept and neat. He has to take a leak, and does so, noticing a certain clean shine to the toilet and sink [even the copper rings around the drains - which he’d convinced Kagura were rings of merit for Gin-san’s excellent hygiene - are gone].
“Who ever heard of a pair of glasses being a back-up dancer anyway, huh,” Kagura is grunting, flicking a booger off her fingers.
Shinpachi begins to squawk, but Gintoki interrupts him. “Shinpachi, you have done well,” he commends loftily. “Did you clean the gutters, too? They could use it.”
“I didn’t clean - ”
“The old hag has the ladder, if you want to finish the job. No, you need to. It’s like going to the bathroom.”
Kagura pipes up, “Wipe from front to back, not side to side?”
“No. Well, yes, but no. I meant that you can’t just stop mid-stream!”
“What kind of demented analogy is that!?” snaps Shinpachi. “And I didn’t clean the Yorozuya! I just got here fifteen minutes ago!” He closes the photo book and tucks it into the waistband of his hakama for safe-keeping. “Katsura-san probably did it, if it wasn’t one of you.” A pause, a sigh. “What am I saying…of course it wasn’t one of you.”
Gintoki slings himself lazily onto the couch opposite, ignoring the aside. “Aa? And where is Zura? Did he finally leave and take his stinky wig with him?”
“I don’t think he’d leave without - ”
The door slides open, interrupting Shinpachi, and the three look up. Zura’s wearing that ridiculous wide brimmed hat and what looks like a kimono liberated from that Amanto crook downstairs. In his hands, he’s toting three bags of groceries.
He immediately takes off the hat, folds to his knees, and gives a low, demure bow. “Welcome home from bread-winning,” he bids them. “I will have dinner prepared shortly.”
Kagura steps forward, crossing her arms, stance wide. “I want shrimp tempura over udon, yup.”
Zura bows more, his eyes averted coyly. “Anything Leader-shujin wishes.”
The Yato gives him an imperial nod of approval, patting the top of the rebel’s head. In response, Zura blushes delicately.
Gintoki immediately jumps off the couch to ram his foot through Zura’s thick skull. “GET THE HELL OUT OF MY HOUSE.”
-+-+-+-
When Zura comes back from the bath, wet hair piled high and ridiculous on his head, Gintoki keeps reading Gintaman. At the sound of the towel dropping to the floor, Gintoki keeps reading, but his teeth grit. During the extended shuffling of fabric in his closet, he begins to sweat.
No, no. He is stronger than this. This fine manga’s plot is incredibly interesting. Zura’s manipulative bullshit is ineffective; he’s not a cave man.
The floor creaks quietly as Zura shifts his weight, bending forward into the closet.
Shit.
He isn’t stronger than this. Screw shitty, shitty Gintaman. Naked Zura good, him like naked Zura.
“Fine, you can stay, god damnit,” he snaps. He looks up quickly, only to find Zura’s apparently made up his mind about which kimono to wear to bed, and is already cinching the belt tightly around himself.
“You’re ruining that,” the rebel says, pointing to the manga being crushed in Gintoki’s fist.
-+-+-+-
The cleaning, subservient streak only lasts two days.
Gintoki misses them.
“You bastard!” he shouts, stomping out of the kitchen, a frying pan clenched in his hand. “Get off your freeloading ass and make dinner!”
“Nn,” grunts Zura absently, curled up on the couch, eyes never straying from the television. His fingers move efficiently on the Bentendo controller [the tap-tap-tap having been the background noise at the Yorozuya all day].
“I mean it!” fumes Gintoki, pointing the pan like a weapon. “I’ll throw you out into the goddamned street, you worthless terrorist!”
“Nn.”
“I work all day and night, slave my youth away to bring wages into this godforsaken house -”
“Nn.”
“- and you, you ungrateful asshole, don’t even have the decency to cook dinner with the bounty of food my blood, sweat, and tears produced? Are you that shameless? Are you that rude? Are you that much of a leech on society?”
Zura gasps. He’s seen the error of his ways and is rightly appalled at himself. Gin-san is the victor.
“Where did that Goomba come from?”
Gintoki sees red.
The frying pan misses Zura’s head only because the taller man trips on the damn kimono Zura filched. It’s far too big on him, even though he’s wearing it as it’s never been worn [ie; correctly]. As the Yorozuya picks himself up off the floor, he glowers at the mocking, light-blue swirls. It figures the moron can’t even wear it hanging loose and seductive, with slivers of pale, lickable inner thigh showing, like in any doujin worth the judging eyes of a middle-aged check-out woman.
There is no teasing inner thigh, no coy bare shoulder. Zura just looks like a potato sack. A potato sack that possibly belongs to Gintoki.
He frowns, suddenly feeling flustered.
“Potato sack bastard,” he mutters, too loudly. After a moment, he grumbles, “Go to two player mode.”
“Nn,” hums Zura, pushing the second controller towards him with his foot.
-+-+-+-
“Gin-san,” intones Shinpachi, sounding deceptively calm. “I know you wouldn’t call me and make me come all the way over from my house, without there being a real emergency.”
“Do you hear my stomach growling? It could become feral. This is an emergency.”
“Red turtle shells do not constitute an emergency!”
The Yorozuya snaps, “Oi oi, Shinpachi, what the hell do you mean red turtle shells aren’t an emergency? They’re heat-seeking! They won’t rest until your car is overturned and your character is frustrated!”
“Cook your own damn - ”
“They have the ability to knock you from first to eighth!”
“Why eighth!?Are you making a rank joke? Are you saying I got hit by a red turtle shell, and knocked into eighth place?!”
“Aa, who put that banana there? Zura, don’t litter so thoughtlessly.”
“It’s not Zura, it’s Katsura.”
“Don’t ignore me, you assholes!” Shinpachi takes a deep breath. He counts to ten, and then says in a monotone, “I’m not making dinner for two perfectly capable adults playing Bentendo Mario Cars.”
“I’m not capable,” says Gintoki, frantically pressing A. “I’m too busy helping Princess Peach redefine gender roles. Do you hate women, Pattsuan?”
“I am not capable either,” adds Zura flatly. “I have to keep an eye on Luigi-san. The pressures of being second fiddle have become too much. He is on suicide-watch.”
Shinpachi makes dinner.
-+-+-+-
“Stop being a stubborn asshole,” he mumbles against the other’s ear, hands grasping [and alright, groping, so sue him]. It’s difficult, trying to pull Zura [who fights him, every inch of the goddamned way] onto his futon. “Would you just - she’s asleep, you idiot.”
“How do you know?”
“Because when she’s awake, she’s breaking things, and I don’t hear anything breaking. So she’s asleep.”
“That’s the stupidest - ah.” The smaller man stops struggling for a moment, distracted by the hard kisses down along his neck. Well-aware of the miniscule window of opportunity he has, Gintoki tugs the idiot flush against his front, pressing more sucking bites to the sensitive skin of the rebel’s nape. But just as his hand slips inside the collar of the kimono [pulling it wide under the guise of kissing], Zura remembers that he’s incurably annoying and starts trying to clamber away again. “Let me go -”
Resisting the urge to punch the jackass is hard. “No. Shut up.” He gives the exposed [success!] shoulder a sharp nip, directing attention away from his wandering hands. “You have to prove your worth in this household if you want to stay. It’s this or cleaning the gutters.”
“Ah? I’ll go get the ladder.”
“I have something else for you to climb.”
“What did you just -”
“Nothing. What did you do, triple knot this belt?”
“A samurai should make every effort to look presentable.”
“My ass, this thing would just fall off your womanly figure if you didn’t - ”
“Do you want to die? I’ll kill you.”
“This is my dying wish, then.” He finally manages some leverage, rolling the smaller man effectively underneath him, and shuts the annoying prattle up with a firm kiss. He waits for it, waits for it- and there it is, that moment when whatever inane thoughts are rattling around inside Zura’s head quiet, when he relaxes in Gintoki’s arms and soft lips open under his own. It’s heady, the knowledge that only he can silence the unending stream of nonsense and politics that pour out from the other samurai.
The quiet shifting of the knot’s fabric falling apart is even headier, and his hands immediately seek out warm skin. Call him a pervert, but he also thoroughly enjoys the fact that even after all this stupid, stupid time, the expanses of skin usually hidden under thick layers of kimono have only been touched by he and he alone. Getting Zura into bed is a very, very exclusive club, and Gintoki intends to exercise his VIP perks tonight.
“Gin-chan?”
Or not.
Zura promptly goes stiff underneath him [in the way Gintoki doesn’t want] and shoves him off rather roughly just as the door slides open.“Gin-chan,” yawns a sleepy Kagura, rubbing her eyes, “I had a nightmare.”
“I don’t care,” mumbles Gintoki, pulling his blanket up protectively and picturing Saigou in a thong. “You deserved a nightmare for eating half of my breakfast this morning. You have learned a valuable lesson, Kagura; stealing a man’s bacon leads only to your own suffering.”
“Gintoki,” mutters Zura disapprovingly.
“Ugh, fine, shut up.” He pinches the bridge of his nose. “Tell me about your bacon-stealing-induced nightmare.”
Kagura sits on the floor beside them and begins detailing a nightmare involving Sadaharu getting cannibalized by mole people. Zura nods and gasps in all the right places not because he is good with children, but because he’s gotten caught up in the tragic tale; Gintoki falls into a doze.
At the end of it all, Kagura says, “I’m worried I might be a prophetess, yup. This old lady has seen too much not to consider it! Ne, Gin-chan?” Zura kicks him beneath the sheets to get his attention. “What do you think?”
Gintoki continues laying there with his eyes closed. “There’s nothing to worry about. It’s only a reflection of your damaged psyche, gone beyond repair.”
“What’s a -”
“Let’s just get you a glass of water,” sighs Zura, getting out of the futon.
-+-+-+-
Reality comes unpleasantly knocking the very next evening.
He’s flipped the ‘closed’ sign on the door, and Kagura and Shinpachi are out to dinner with Shinpachi’s gorilla sister [at least bananas are supposed to be a good source of potassium]. Gintoki finds Zura on the couch, sitting primly with his hands in his lap, bathed in the off-blue glow of the television.
On the screen, there is a riot.
“Eighteen injured today in the altercation between what appears to be an up-and-coming Amanto street gang and the resident human…”
“Oi,” says Gintoki. Zura doesn’t hear him, eyes fixed on the news coverage. Thin fingers knot themselves as the camera pans over a young Japanese youth with bandages wrapped all around his head. “Oi,” Gintoki says again. When Zura still doesn’t respond, he flops on the couch next to the other man.
The riot is revealed to be unrelated to the Jouishishi, but Zura’s concern [etched across his brow plain and bold] doesn’t fade. If anything, he may be even more upset at the fact - there had been innocent civilians injured, both Amanto and human in species. Although Zura has never known their names until seeing the scrolling bar of kanji across the bottom of the screen, his heart is on his sleeve [and it’s trailing blood from fresh wounds]. There is nothing he could have done, even if he had been there, and he knows it. Practicality and hopelessness war on his face.
The Yorozuya feels a sick, clenching feeling in his stomach. In one swift movement, he swings his legs up, lying down on the couch with his head in the smaller man’s lap. They watch TV in silence until the report is long over and One Park is well underway.
“Your head is heavy,” Zura complains softly. “My legs are falling asleep.”
“Stop whining,” Gintoki returns flatly, although he’s thinking whatever it takes to keep you here.
-+-+-+-
Stir-craziness seems to set in shortly after. Gintoki almost feels like saying something about the patience of the samurai or whatever Zura usually can’t stop flapping his mouth about, but the way the smaller man paces back and forth to the window [the drawn tightness to his mouth] derails the comment every time.
“I think tomorrow,” he says to Gintoki one morning, in that wistful, soft tone the Yorozuya hates.
“You don’t think any day, why should tomorrow be any different?” he grumbles in return, sticking his face back into an old copy of Jump. Kanda Yuu’s a right bastard with stupid hair, sure, but he probably never sounds like that, enduring and fragile all at once. Naruto probably never sounds like that, either. Why can’t Zura be more like Naruto? Why couldn’t the wigged idiot be obsessed with becoming Hokage instead of obsessed with committing enough treason to be execu -
- Whatever. Ramen is better than soba, in any case.
He hears him talking on the phone that night. “I’m just checking my horoscope,” the rebel had informed he and Kagura loudly (although nobody had asked).
“Don’t use my phone for that useless shit,” he’d returned. “Do you know how much it costs? I don’t have yen coming out of my ears, oi, or anywhere else for that matter.”
“My horoscope said I’m going to get new clothes soon, yup.”
“Aa?! You’re calling that crook hotline too?! And what kind of horoscope is that? That’s just a blatant eventuality!”
“Blue is this month’s power colour, ahuh. Mommy, I want to go school shopping, and get a blue pencil case. It’s my destiny to become more powerful.”
“It’s not Mommy, it’s - ”
“You don’t go to school, schools don’t allow apes in the classroom. Everyone shut up, it’s back on.”
Gintoki wanted to listen to the TV, but Zura’s wig-stink waves must have been disrupting the sound waves in the room. There could be no other explanation as to why he found himself concentrating very, very hard on the hushed conversation.
“I see” and “Aa” had dominated Zura’s end of the dialogue, although the “No, I understand it’s not a good time,” with that goddamn bullshit tone, brands itself into Gintoki’s head. He knows it probably means he’ll have to continue putting up with that asshole using more than his fair share of the hot water in the morning, but truthfully that’s not what agitates him. It sounds like their mutual horoscope - it’s not a good time for Zura and he to be whatever Zura and he are, might never be a good time at this rate, the way the reckless moron was going. At the rate Zura was going, he’d be ki - …he’d never become Hokage.
Gintoki’s annoyed because it’d just be simpler if Zura was more like Naruto. That’s all.
A few minutes later, the Yorozuya listens to another call of Zura’s, and can hear the automated voice on the other line.
“I said don’t use my phone for that useless shit! What the hell is a power colour anyway?!”
-+-+-+-
Zura’s still there that night. Lying on the adjacent futon, Gintoki wants to kiss him or punch him, but compromises with himself and does neither. Instead, he runs a rough, heavy hand down the side of Zura’s face. Silent, the other man turns into it as if it were a tender kiss [or a well-deserved punch].
It’s not a matter of waiting for the right time, he knows. That’s a stupid way to think about it. Hell, even if there never is a right time, he doesn’t care. He doesn’t care about the Joui, or about saving Japan, or about how Zura might never get his head out of his stupid ass and stop living in the past.
He knows what he does care about. And he’s not going to let a single moment of it slip through his fingers doing something as useless as waiting.
When his palm rubs too rough along the side of Zura’s neck [still flawless, still free of any executioner’s nicks], the rebel responds with tired murmurs. Gintoki leans down to taste them, right now.
-+-+-+-
Settling back in is somewhat tentative, but it happens. Zura may be a gloomy, brainless, overdramatic moron with hair like a woman, but he’s also frustratingly solid, when it truly comes down to it. Zura makes plans, Zura waits for the opportune moment, Zura is annoyingly practical, for all his bomb-lobbing and extended inappropriate daydreams. If it’s not a good time, it’s simply not a good time.
That doesn’t mean it’s not a good time for other things. Such as indigestion.
“Shinpachiiii,” moans Kagura piteously to the balmy night sky. “My insides hurt. I need another kebob. I’m eating for two, yup.”
“Where did you hear that phrase!? That’s not something you should be saying, Kagura-chan! And if your stomach hurts, you need to stop eating, not eat more!”
“Catherine, Shinpachi’s trying to starve my baby.”
The older woman tsks, turning vegetables over on the grill. “That’s typical, haahn. Men are greedy, worthless bastards, they’ll take you for everything you’re worth.”
Gintoki ventures from his lawn chair, without opening his eyes, “Which, in your case, is about 300 yen.”
“What did you say, you shithead?! I’ll grill your ugly face up next!”
“Ugly face? Ugly face? At least my face has never been captured in a mug shot, you two-bit thief - ”
“Children,” drawls Otose in warning, a spark from her lighter flaring in the dim next to him. The streets are less lively than before, the festival day finally winding down. It’s nicer like this, without all the little brats running around, screaming about wishes and cowpies or whatever this stupid-ass holiday is about anymore. The buzz of the cicadas and the drowsy heat add to the atmosphere a lot more than the frantic consumer bustle of Edo’s populace.
It’s too bad the trees still look just as stupid as they had during the day, though. Like there’s little pieces of toilet paper fluttering off of them, in supplication of some god on high that blesses toilet paper rolls, so one doesn’t run out in an hour most dire.
“Sakata,” murmurs the old bag, the syllables rounded by her cigarette. “You should take some of those kebobs upstairs.”
His eyes still don’t open, which is more telling than if they’d blinked wide and darted suspiciously, like a Detective Conan villain. “The last time Sadaharu got a hold of a plate of kebabs, we were pulling sticks out of that goddamn monster’s ass like he was a Jenga tower. Nobody won that game, oi.”
The older woman ignores the deflection, dark nails tapping against a paper filter, a counter-rhythm to the cicada’s hum. “There’s an extra plate inside. Bring it up before it gets cold.”
“Nag, nag, nag. No wonder your husband checked out early, the silent grave was probably a welcome relief.” But he gets to his feet, palm rubbing the back of his head. The plate is retrieved, and he spends the next ten minutes arguing with Catherine over her cheap skewering [“Is that why you’re such a pain in the ass? Do you even know what real skewering is? When was the last time someone felt bad enough for you to show you a good skewering? No, no, I don’t want to hear it! Go drug an alley cat and have your way with the dumb beast!”]. Just as he rounds the stairs to the Yorozuya, the old woman’s raspy voice stops him again.
“Oh, and Sakata?”
He swivels. “Aa?”
“If my building gets blown up, I’ll show you real domestic terrorism, and strap dynamite to your worthless balls.”
-+-+-+-
“Fireworks?” questions the most immediate liability to Gintoki’s balls. He doesn’t look like such a grievously dangerous character at the moment; his eyes are still glazed from dozing in the bedroom, his hair cow licked, and a kebab half-falling apart in his hands [it’s really the worst skewering he’s ever seen, someone should set that useless burglar right with a spray bottle].
“Yeah.” He watches the other man struggle with a floppy zucchini slice. “…No one’ll see you on the roof,” he adds begrudgingly.
Zura gives him a strange look, and soon the three of them [Gintoki, Zura, and the Worst Kebab in Edo] have climbed up to the flat shingles of the Yorozuya. The rebel peers over the edge, watching Kagura chase an increasingly panicked Shinpachi with a sparkler. Nodding in something like approval, he then sits beside the already prone Gintoki, kimono and haori pooling across the dusty tiles.
Just as Zura opens his mouth, the taller samurai holds up his hand. “I don’t want to talk about wishes, or the folly of youth, or cowpies,” Gintoki stipulates.
“It’s not cowpies, it’s cowherds,” corrects Zura, bemused.
“I don’t care, they’re both off-limits. I didn’t bring you up here to be a gloomy, poetic bastard, you hear me?”
The long-haired man’s mouth quirks just barely enough for the trained eye to notice. “Is that so?”
“That’s what I said, lift that ugly shag rug up off your ears already.”
“What did you bring me up here for, then, Gintoki?”
The Yorozuya’s mouth contorts, and he turns his head to give his nose a thorough pick. Maybe he should give it a good blow on one of those toilet-paper trees later. “That’s the problem with you,” he informs the other man. “You go around challenging everything. Take a good look at where that’s gotten you, Zura.”
“Adjacent to a triple-threat of crusty bird defecation, listening to you ramble.”
“That’s right, h - what? No! No! It got you holed up in a room on a festival night.”
“But I’m not anymore. I am adjacent to a triple-threat of - ”
“Shut up, shut up, that’s not the point. You need to just accept things once in a while. Why did I bring you up to the roof? Because, don’t ask questions, just enjoy your goddamned kebab.”
The rebel says nothing, shifting his knees under his arms. The two sit quietly together, until a very soggy plop interrupts the cicadas’ song. “Gintoki,” murmurs Zura.
Gintoki shakes his head, heaving a sigh. “I know. That was your kebab, wasn’t it.”
“Aa.”
“Damnit.” He shifts a bit closer, his arm lightly wrapping around the other’s waist. Zura stays stiff for a moment, but then eases back, curving into his shoulder. “It just shows that you can’t depend on a soggy zucchini, I guess.”
“You’ve already shown me that,” responds Zura, in a low, rich tone that makes Gintoki blush.
“O-oi, what’s that supposed to mean? Are you trying to say my zucchini is anything but a robust pinnacle of a firm and dependable meal? It’s supposed to be a night of wishing, not lying. Get that smirk off your face.”
“Shhh,” breathes Zura. “It’s starting.” Gintoki can feel the rebel’s breath against his neck, and his arm tightens around that slim waist, hidden under layers of fabric. The bursts of colour light the sky, and he very seriously tries not to wonder how long it’s been since Zura’s gotten to watch fireworks, real ones, not ones peppered with chunks of official government buildings. That’s not the kind of thing he wants to think about, when there’s so many better things at hand [or increasingly heavy against his shoulder, warm and content and - chuckling?].
“Ah, don’t you wish, as I wish, that the folly of our youths was not wasting Tanabata thinking it was about cowpies…”
Gintoki smirks. “Shut up,” he mutters, cutting off the other’s amusement with an insistent kiss.
-+-+-+-
Somehow, it hasn’t happened once yet, not since the first night Zura stayed over. It seems ridiculous that they should actually [as Zura puts it, with the capitals blaring even verbally] “Do It” less when together under the same roof. Not for lack of wanting to; having the rebel around all the time would definitely be a trial too severe for Gintoki’s libido if it weren’t for Zura’s persistent bad habit of actually speaking. Gintoki can tell he himself is reaching a point that could only be called “critical” when he listens to Zura’s brain-dead musings on life, politics, and Ham-Hams in general, and still wants to stick his head under the other man’s kimono.
Even worse, he can tell Zura is nearing the end of that unfathomable patience with his Perfectly Natural Urges. It’s a lot less pronounced than Gintoki burning everyone’s breakfast because he’s trying to sneak a peak of the other man changing, sure. But it’s there, in the quick flicker of a lowered glance to Gintoki when Shinpachi and Kagura go to the grocer’s, or the way his body very quietly brims to the Yorozuya’s covert casual touches. They both want it, but it’s not happening.
Why?
Well, Gintoki won’t play the blame game, but it’s almost entirely without a shadow of a doubt all that goddamned shitty gorilla girl’s goddamned shitty gorilla fault.
In the darkened living room, with a movie faithfully ignored on the TV, he’ll drop a hand to Zura’s inner thigh, feel the other’s legs spread subtly as he pushes folds of fabric away and - there’s Kagura, bouncing over the back of the couch, asking if there’s popcorn or bon bons or salmon rolls, which they don’t even serve at movie theaters.
Before the sun’s quite risen, and Zura’s not awake enough yet to realise he’s making soft, fucking cute sounds as Gintoki sucks on the nape of his neck, grinding into him from behind - there’s Kagura, ripping the covers off the futon and informing Mama that radio exercises are just about to start, they need to get a move on if they’re gonna win the gold, yup.
Even in the shower, while Gintoki’s peering through the curtains at real-life Zura making funny, unattractive faces at himself in the mirror as he flosses, but thinking about what a man needs to think about during a dry-spell like this; and just as fantasy-life Zura bends over to show him just how authentic his school-girl disguise is, yes, yes, even down to the panties, which he begs so very sweetly for Gintoki to pull off with his mouth - there is Kagura, kicking in the door and strangling Gintoki with the shower curtain, because she’s been conscious for more than fifteen minutes and hasn’t eaten yet.
It’s no surprise that when Kagura asks for a sleepover at Shinpachi’s, Gintoki falls to his knees in front of the boy and hugs him hard enough for the boy’s spine to let out a protesting crack.
“I mean, it’s just that neither of us has had a sleepover before, and I’m pretty sure Ane-ue can’t physically poison her,” Shinpachi wheezes, once he’s been released.
“She did eat that bomb once,” interjects Zura calmly.
“I sure did!” chirps Kagura proudly. “I could eat another one right now, ahuh!”
“What are you doing,” Shinpachi demands flatly as Zura rifles obligingly through the sleeves of his kimono. “Stop it. You’ll have to help clean up the burnt vomit this time if you do. What is wrong with you?”
Gintoki, who isn’t listening, can’t stop smiling. “I don’t even care, feed her all the bombs you want, when are you leaving?”
Otae collects the two after she gets off work, and following a series of energetic door slams and lazy waving from the balcony, the little demonchild rides off on Sadaharu, Shinpachi and his sister trailing.
As soon as the door slides shut on the splinters it’s left in, Gintoki starts to move, but Zura holds up a hand.
“No,” he asserts. “Hold on a few more minutes.”
They wait the allotted comedic timing in silence. There are no cries of I forgot my toothbrush! or Sadaharu left his bowl, yup!, no pitter-patter of returning monster girl feet come to trample Gintoki’s dreams of getting some. There is nothing but utter quiet until Zura lowers his hand again.
“Thank god,” the rebel mutters. Gintoki lunges.
-+-+-+-
“Oh god,” the rebel chokes, fingernails gouging the sides of the Yorozuya’s desk. Gintoki works his fingers deeper, his other hand pressing on Zura’s sweat-slicked thigh, pinning the other man’s leg too high.
“How badly do you want it, aa? Aa?” Gintoki murmurs, leaning down to kiss the inside of his knee. “Zura?”
“Sh-shut up,” grits the other samurai. Something falls off the desk, clattering to the floor. “A-aah. Nnh.”
“Che, you’re still too tight. Stop being such a tightass, Zura.”
“Katsura.”
“Ah? What an ego you have.” He twists the fingers.
“Oh, ahn, Gintoki - ”
“Better.” He leans up for a biting kiss, the press causing Zura to slip along the desk and make a high noise in his throat. “I’m listening.”
The smaller man glowers up at him as best he can, although it’s hard to see much beyond the mussed hair and blushing face. The muscles in Zura’s leg twitch, and he produces very slowly, with utmost severity, “…I want it.”
“Mm?” Gintoki slips his fingers from inside the other, trailing the rough pads up along the innermost curve of the man’s body. Zura shivers hard, skin grating along the wood of the desk as he slides farther. “Want what?”
“You damn bastard, why do you always - I want it, do it already, you shitty perm - ”
Gintoki smirks down at the flushed, agitated [some might even say hot and bothered, oho] man beneath him, and swings a leg up onto the desk, clambering up. “I love it when you beg,” he mutters, somewhat to be an ass, but mostly because it’s true. After some mildly awkward shifting, and positioning his knee inside a half-open drawer, he adds, “Don’t you love it when I listen to you?”
Before Zura can snap a retort, Gintoki snaps his hips, and all Zura lets out is a loud, hoarse groan.
For all his talk, Gintoki has to try very hard not to lose it right then and there on the first few deep thrusts. Shit, he feels so fucking tight and good and the way he’s shuddering is - no, fuck, pull it together. He focuses instead on saying, “Nnh, come on Zura, keep it down, you’re lying low, remember?”
“Shut, up,” moans Zura. “Damnit, ah-aah. Aah! Harder - ”
If Zura doesn’t already love Gintoki listening, he probably changes his mind somewhere between then, and when they fall off the desk entirely.
-+-+-+-
At approaching three weeks of the rebel ‘s stay, there is definitely something of a comfortable routine established. Waking up next to Zura isn’t always a picnic [terrorists have highly-strung reflexes, and his fucking delightful good morning kisses are sometimes met with punches to the throat and a mumbled, remorseless apology], but it’s not so bad, either. Everyone seems to be getting along enough, anyway.
“You worthless, low-income bastard! Get out, get out of this house! If I see your miserable face again, I will put it through a meat grinder.”
Gintoki stops in his tracks on the threshold to the living room. He wiggles a pinky in his ear. “Excuse me, what did you just say, Zura? Kick you out into the cold night like the useless, bomb-happy bum you are? Rub your face in the steaming pile Sadaharu left in the gutter, while I’m at it?”
“Gin-chan, shut up,” responds Kagura distractedly. The Yorozuya leans over the back of the couch, surveying the scene; Shinpachi lies on the far couch, reading a fan magazine. The Yato and Zura are on the floor, each holding one of the girl’s Tea Time Twosome doll set. There are several alarming things to attend to, and Gintoki figures he should start quickly, as he might not have time to cover all points.
“Oi oi oi, why is Himiko-chan’s shirt off?! What the hell kind of game are you playing?!”
“Himiko-chan’s being the husband, yup,” Kagura explains. “So we took her shirt off.”
“What?! That’s not how it works - ”
“Gin-san, I already tried,” Shinpachi says flatly from behind his magazine. “It’s no use. Just ignore them.”
It seems like good advice [amazing advice, really, if only he’d known it the very first time he met either of the brain-dead idiots], and his blood sugar’s feeling a little low, so Gintoki aborts the tirade.
As he heads to the kitchen, the drama of the living room continues, with Kagura’s voice booming.
“I own this house, you damn horseface! I own this house and everything in it, ahuh! You think I don’t know you only married me for my money?”
“Aa? What money? You insist on losing all our money gambling and drinking!”
“It’s my money to begin with! I’ll wipe my ass with it if I want, yup!”
“This is sick,” mutters Gintoki. “This is really sick. What kind of child plays like this? Zura, stop encouraging her.”
“It’s not Zura, it’s Mrs. Mr. Himiko-chan.”
Gintoki slams his glass down onto the counter. “You morons didn’t even change her name? It’s still Himiko-chan? Do either of you even know the difference between boys and girls, aa?”
“Ch, of course I do. Boys have big, hairy - ”
“Kagura-chaaan!”
“ - stupid nostrils, that go hoonf hoonf.” She lifts up Mr. Himiko-chan. “Hoonf, hoonf. And why isn’t my dinner ready, you lazy cow?”
“It would already be done if you hadn’t felt the need to berate me the moment you walked in the door, you drunken fool.”
Mr. Himiko-chan is lifted, and begins battering Mrs. Mr. Himiko-chan over the head with her torso. “I don’t want your lousy excuses, woman! Get me my dinner, now, ahuh, or I’ll do to you what I did to our dog!”
“Itaai, itaaaai!” As one doll hits the other, Gintoki’s palm hits his face. “Your dinner is right here, it’s right here!”
Then, Kagura makes horrible, nightmare-spawning mouth gnashing noises, which Gintoki considers the normal eating sound effects for the common Yato. A few moments later, the girl lets out a blood curdling yowl. Shinpachi fumbles his magazine, Sadaharu hits his head on the bottom of the kotatsu, and the Yorozuya feels the hair on the back of his neck raise. “Oi!”
“It’s poison sukonbu! You poisoned me, you bitch!”
“Fu fu fu,” Zura’s doll responds. “And now what’s left of your money is all mine. This is for Wags-kun.”
“I’ll… I’ll see you both… in hell…!” The girl smashes Mr. Himiko-chan into the floor, and then sits back, looking at Zura. “Now Mrs. Mr. Himiko-chan has to chop up the body and get rid of it in the river, yup.”
“I’m not letting you watch any more late night TV,” says Gintoki dully. He sees now, why brave, noble Shinpachi had had no choice but to strive for ignorance. “You can put Himiko-chan’s corpse back in her box. It’s time to eat, wash the blood off your hands.”
The girl gets to her feet, collects the murdering wife from Zura, and tosses both dolls into her cupboard. Shinpachi chastises her, getting up from the couch to put the dolls away properly and lecture her on caring for her things [like he always does] while Kagura ignores him and walks away [like she always does].
Gintoki harrumphs as Zura joins him in the kitchen, to wash his own hands. “Do you need any help?”
“No thanks, I’m not sick of not having explosive diarrhea yet. I know you only ask because I won’t ever say yes, you jackass.” The rice cooker’s light blinks off, and Gintoki reaches around Zura for the rice scoop. “You know what you could do to help? Start paying me back for all of my food you keep shoving in your mouth.”
“Ah, put it on my tab.”
“Tab? You can’t have a tab. A tab would mean you’re a regular, and I don’t plan on letting you drag me into your terrorist shit again, so you can’t have a tab.”
“Hn. That smells good.”
“Don’t change the subject.” The rice is plopped unceremoniously into four bowls. He hasn’t made a mistake in portioning since the first week, although he should, the greedy, thankless asshole.
Zura moves away, clearing the kotatsu of debris, one of the very few dinner-related tasks he is allotted. “Which subject? I am best at Japanese and History.”
“Your brain is what’s history, oi.” The second, better pork omelet finishes [the first one is definitely going to Zura, who doesn’t deserve a soft, creamy omelet, and Kagura, who barely lets food touch her tongue before it plummets down her gullet anyway]. He sections them into the bowls, and Zura promptly picks up two, carrying them to the table, Gintoki following with the second two. “Shinpachi! Kagura! - Oh.”
Returned from the bathroom, the boy scowls from beneath sopping bangs, wiping his glasses on his hakama. Zura seats himself at the table, Kagura joining him, and comments, “Ah, puberty. I will add ‘antiperspirant’ to the grocery list.”
“It’s not sweat! Why would you think it’s sweat?! She tried to drown me!”
“I saw something in the drain, Gin-chan! Shinpachi was too cowardly to look, too. I had to force him into manhood, ahuh.”
“Ah, puberty,” nods Gintoki.
“Knock it off! Didn’t you guys hear me calling for help?!”
“No. We were having a very important grown-up discussion.”
“That,” intones Kagura, cheeks already full with rice, “means they were having an argument, Shinpachi-kun. It’s a shame nobody can put the work in to make it work, like in the old days.”
“What do you know about the old days, you brat? Eat your damn rice.”
Shinpachi reaches for the soy sauce, muttering bitterly, “So a dumb argument’s more important than me drowning. What was it this time, Gin-san? Did Katsura-san make another bad gum gum fruit pun? Did he insult your hair? Did he insult your - ”
“It was about money,” Zura interjects, unruffled, bold as brass and equally as unintelligent. Kagura’s eyes go wide.
“Arguing about money before dinner…?” She stares down at what’s left of her rice bowl, and then lets out another blood curdling wail, dropping her chopsticks. “Poison! It’s poison! Gin-chan, how could you?!”
“It’s not rice, it’s poison?!” Zura shouts back, and then clutches his stomach. “A-ah, only now, far too late, do I see…! Eliminating the witnesses and the culprit in one fell swoop! The inhumanity of such an evil mastermind…!”
“Oi, I’ll show you inhumanity if you both don’t shut up already and eat!” Gintoki rails, but it’s too late. Kagura has decided the rice is poison, and Zura’s feeble mind has been convinced. They sink to the floor, wailing and making last wishes.
“Kagura-chan, a pork omelet with rice is what you’d be having right now if you weren’t goofing off, it’s not a good dying request. It’s not a good dying request to begin with,” Shinpachi deadpans. “Is this how it is? Everyone gets riled over a fake poisoning, but a real drowning gets nothing? Is this how it really is?”
Gintoki shakes his head over his bowl, attempting to belatedly take Shinpachi’s well-given advice, but it’s no use. Try as he might, to ignore their bleating is not an option. All three of them are obnoxious and loud, and he’s probably going to get a stomachache from their idiocy, because his intestines were distracted off their game. Then, in her flailing, Kagura ends up knocking over her bowl and snorting rice up her nose, and Shinpachi laughs, and Zura smiles, helping his fallen comrade up and producing a hanky.
He’ll probably get a stomachache, but… it’s really not so bad.
-+-+-+-
A day later, when the three come back from a client’s house, Zura’s not there anymore.
The extra futon is nowhere in sight, and the video games have all been put away. Sadaharu looks like he’s seen some kind of affectionate war, with his fur sticking up in all directions from excessive petting.
The house isn’t any less quiet, any less lively. They do as they always do - Gintoki says he’s watching TV but only dozes, Kagura says she’s cleaning but only breaks things, Shinpachi says he’s balancing the check book but only has several minor coronary seizures. It’s exactly how it was before Zura climbed in his window and made unreasonable terrorist demands, so it shouldn’t feel any different now.
He’s glad to be rid of the other man, really. He was getting tired of pulling long, black hair out of the drain, and of fighting over the remote control, and of listening to the idiot’s ridiculous out-of-touch prattle, and of -
“Gin-san,” says Shinpachi, breaking the line of thought. “That’s not right.”
Gintoki looks down, where he’d been portioning dinner into four plates, and frowns.
-+-+-+-
The bedroom feels bigger that night, which is stupid. It’s just because the futon is squarely in the middle of the room again, and he’s not so close to the wall, so the room itself looks larger. It has nothing to do with anything else, certainly not anything that matters.
It definitely has nothing to do with anyone he’d shared a musty childhood bedroom with, and later a cramped and crumpling tent, and later still the noisy upper floor of a Yorozuya, if only for just under a month.
Thunk.
“Ow, shit,” comes a voice that has nothing to do with the sudden, warming spike in his pulse.
“Get out,” he says to the ceiling immediately. “Haven’t we seen enough of eachother? Are the police outside?”
“No,” says Zura [to which question, Gintoki isn’t sure]. His hands are chill from the night air, and the white-haired man turns his cheek into their touch. Zura’s obi brushes against his forearm as the other shifts down onto the futon, and it’s all Gintoki needs to loop that arm around the smaller samurai, pulling him in.
“So,” murmurs Gintoki, once he’s got Zura twined around him like a particularly attractive vine.
“So,” agrees Zura calmly, those cool fingers curling against Gintoki’s chest, spreading just under Gintoki’s jaw.
“…Ready to start working off that tab?”
There’s punches, but there’s laughter too, and it’s got everything to do with what matters.
Fandom: Gintama
Rating: R
Pairing: Gintoki/Katsura.
Disclaimer: Sally Saw a Silver Souled Samurai by the Sea Shore, and didn't own anything but a speech impediment.
Feedback: A high five, a slap in the face, hit me with it.
Notes: For antimonial. Title from the Radwimps.
Cross-posted at ginzura & gintama.
The morning after, Gintoki realizes he has made a huge mistake. It’s not that he’s worried about the Shisengumi - he’s not, they couldn’t find their own assholes if given explicit instructions, a bloodhound, and a GPS - it’s the principle of it. He’s not running a goddamned hostel, here. And he’s certainly not running a hideout for idiot terrorists with stupid wig hair. How the hell had Zura talked him into this?
Beside him, Zura shifts, the blanket sliding down his bare waist to reveal the slope of his lower back. Gintoki’s eyes drop to it, spacing out.
Ah, right. He’d been talked into it with body language.
He brushes the blanket lower still, taking a few moments to appreciate the view. Then, he braces his foot against that maddening little curve, and shoves, sending Zura tumbling onto the floor.
“Oi oi, wake up. Gin-san wants breakfast.”
-+-+-+-
After enough wheedling, guilting, and cajoling, the other samurai makes those inexplicable pancakes. There’s absolutely no sense to be found in why Zura can make them better than even the Intergalactic House of Pancakes, but there’s never any sense in anything Zura does, so the Yorozuya doesn’t think too much about it. Zura puts his hair back, Gintoki opens this week’s Jump, and things are somewhat peaceful.
When a sleep-ruffled, yawning Kagura slams open her closet door, said peace is resolutely broken. Sitting on the wooden edge, she stares at Zura for a full minute, then bounds out of the compartment, tackling Gintoki’s torso.
“Gin-chan! You finally got me a mommy!”
The white-haired man slams her in the forehead with an open palm, trying to pry her off before she breaks his ribcage. “What’s that supposed to mean, aa!? I’m not your goddamned daddy! You moron! That’s Zura!”
“It’s not Zura, it’s Katsura,” comes from the kitchen.
“Huh. So the ex-yellow curry ninja’s gonna be the mommy?”
“It’s not ex-yellow curry ninja, it’s Katsura.”
“No! Little gorilla brats don’t get mommies, they get put in zoos and laughed at!”
The Yato releases him with a disgusted noise, and Gintoki holds his stomach, gasping for breath. Kagura strides over to Zura [who ceases flipping pancakes and places his spatula to the side, so as not to lose any fingers]. The girl puts her hands on her hips. Zura puts his in his kimono sleeves.
They stare at each other.
“We got a way of life here, ahuh,” says the girl. She’s chewing on non-existent gum to emphasize her tough-girl in-the-know status.
The rebel nods. “I see you are a tough-girl in-the-know.”
“That’s right! And times are hard!”
“Ah.”
“You think you can handle it?” demands Kagura, pointing.
“I am making pancakes,” replies Zura.
The redhead is already holding a plate. She gives Gintoki a thumbs-up. “Mommy approved, yup.”
Gintoki punches her in the head in response. To retaliate, she kicks him in the chest. It escalates into a brawl quickly.
“It’s not mommy, it’s Katsura,” says Zura, but no one is listening.
-+-+-+-
The rebel is skittish the first few days, spending most of his time in Gintoki’s bedroom rather than the front room. He thinks he’s being cautious; Gintoki thinks he’s being a paranoid, anti-social asshole. Not that he cares what Zura does - it’s just annoying.
“What are you, a blossoming hikikomori?” complains the Yorozuya, picking his nose. “That’s stupid. I mean, sure, your hair is greasy enough to pull it off, but still.”
Zura doesn’t look up from the newspaper, spread out on the extra futon in front of him. “You’re stupid and your hair looks like a dirty cotton swab.”
“That’s disgusting, what is with that disgusting imagination of yours, aa? Anyway, you have to get out of here sometime.”
A crinkle of pages precedes the response, “Those sentences are unrelated. Just saying ‘anyway’ isn’t enough of a transition.”
“How about this; if you don’t get out of this room today, I’m going to kick your ass, but I might kick it anyway.”
“You were supposed to use a different transition, not just use ‘anyway’ in a different - wah!” he cuts off as Gintoki kicks his newspaper across the room in a flurry of ink and paper.
Gintoki continues picking his nose. “Oh, hey, sorry, were you reading that?”
The smaller man narrows hazel eyes, glaring up at him. “If this is about trying to hide your smut, I’ve already seen it.”
“ - Why were you in my closet?”
“You should be ashamed.”
“Oi, oi, you should be ashamed! What kind of nosy guest are you, asshole? I bet you go through medicine cabinets at parties.”
“Shut up, what the hell kind of pervert has those kinds of doujin -”
“Healthy young man! Interests!” bursts Gintoki, vaguely pink in the cheeks. “Hinamori-chan brings out the darkest desires in even the most reserved of men.” This is not going anywhere he intended it to. He needs to take control of the situation. “- You shut up.”
“You shut up.”
“You - augh, you shut up! There’s a rerun of your stupid show on.”
“What?”
“‘The Universe’s Most Useless Pets.’”
“It’s ‘The Universe’s Most Endearing Pets,’” sighs the black haired man, getting up to retrieve the scattered mess of his paper, “and they only play reruns on Wednesday.”
Gintoki taps an impatient foot. “It’s a special. For diligent brain-dead viewers only.”
“There’s no special.”
“There could be. How would you know, hikikomori?”
Sitting down on the futon and smoothing out the reclaimed newspaper, Zura goes back to ignoring him. Gintoki searches his brain for an idea. An overturned soba truck in the streets flooded the front room with stupid buckwheat noodles? The birthday gift he’s been begging off on for three years is on the couch? Kondou Isao is helpless and hog-tied on the living room floor?
Aa, would that be gorilla-tied?
This is starting to smack of something that requires effort, so Gintoki gives up. With a fwump, he plops down on the futon behind Zura. Why should he care if the shithead won’t leave his bedroom? Half of the time he can’t even get the idiot into the bedroom -
Gintoki’s eyebrows arch.
“So…” he drawls lowly, leaning over Zura’s back, one hand settling lightly on the rebel’s waist, “you wanna take another look at those doujin? Y’know, together?”
Zura leaves the bedroom.
-+-+-+-
When he returns from a job with Kagura to see Shinpachi lying on one of the couches, flipping through what looks like an Otsuu-chan photobook, he assumes the worst.
“Pattsuan, are your legs broken?” Gintoki gasps.
The boy looks up. “What?”
“Shinpachiiii! Your legs, your legs!” wails Kagura, following Gintoki’s lead. “Now you’ll never be one of Otsuu-chan’s handsome back-up dancers!”
“I told you that in private, Kagura-chan,” replies Shinpachi in a monotone, face dull.
The Yato waves a hand. “A girl shouldn’t concern herself with boys’ privates, yup.”
“What!? In private means you don’t tell anyone!”
“Huh, why would I be telling anyone about your privates in the first place? You sure are full of yourself, Shinpachi-kun, ahuh.”
“Nobody’s talking about privates!”
Gintoki leaves them to it, glancing into his bedroom. There is no gloomy terrorist to be found, but the futons are rolled up, and the floor looks swept and neat. He has to take a leak, and does so, noticing a certain clean shine to the toilet and sink [even the copper rings around the drains - which he’d convinced Kagura were rings of merit for Gin-san’s excellent hygiene - are gone].
“Who ever heard of a pair of glasses being a back-up dancer anyway, huh,” Kagura is grunting, flicking a booger off her fingers.
Shinpachi begins to squawk, but Gintoki interrupts him. “Shinpachi, you have done well,” he commends loftily. “Did you clean the gutters, too? They could use it.”
“I didn’t clean - ”
“The old hag has the ladder, if you want to finish the job. No, you need to. It’s like going to the bathroom.”
Kagura pipes up, “Wipe from front to back, not side to side?”
“No. Well, yes, but no. I meant that you can’t just stop mid-stream!”
“What kind of demented analogy is that!?” snaps Shinpachi. “And I didn’t clean the Yorozuya! I just got here fifteen minutes ago!” He closes the photo book and tucks it into the waistband of his hakama for safe-keeping. “Katsura-san probably did it, if it wasn’t one of you.” A pause, a sigh. “What am I saying…of course it wasn’t one of you.”
Gintoki slings himself lazily onto the couch opposite, ignoring the aside. “Aa? And where is Zura? Did he finally leave and take his stinky wig with him?”
“I don’t think he’d leave without - ”
The door slides open, interrupting Shinpachi, and the three look up. Zura’s wearing that ridiculous wide brimmed hat and what looks like a kimono liberated from that Amanto crook downstairs. In his hands, he’s toting three bags of groceries.
He immediately takes off the hat, folds to his knees, and gives a low, demure bow. “Welcome home from bread-winning,” he bids them. “I will have dinner prepared shortly.”
Kagura steps forward, crossing her arms, stance wide. “I want shrimp tempura over udon, yup.”
Zura bows more, his eyes averted coyly. “Anything Leader-shujin wishes.”
The Yato gives him an imperial nod of approval, patting the top of the rebel’s head. In response, Zura blushes delicately.
Gintoki immediately jumps off the couch to ram his foot through Zura’s thick skull. “GET THE HELL OUT OF MY HOUSE.”
-+-+-+-
When Zura comes back from the bath, wet hair piled high and ridiculous on his head, Gintoki keeps reading Gintaman. At the sound of the towel dropping to the floor, Gintoki keeps reading, but his teeth grit. During the extended shuffling of fabric in his closet, he begins to sweat.
No, no. He is stronger than this. This fine manga’s plot is incredibly interesting. Zura’s manipulative bullshit is ineffective; he’s not a cave man.
The floor creaks quietly as Zura shifts his weight, bending forward into the closet.
Shit.
He isn’t stronger than this. Screw shitty, shitty Gintaman. Naked Zura good, him like naked Zura.
“Fine, you can stay, god damnit,” he snaps. He looks up quickly, only to find Zura’s apparently made up his mind about which kimono to wear to bed, and is already cinching the belt tightly around himself.
“You’re ruining that,” the rebel says, pointing to the manga being crushed in Gintoki’s fist.
-+-+-+-
The cleaning, subservient streak only lasts two days.
Gintoki misses them.
“You bastard!” he shouts, stomping out of the kitchen, a frying pan clenched in his hand. “Get off your freeloading ass and make dinner!”
“Nn,” grunts Zura absently, curled up on the couch, eyes never straying from the television. His fingers move efficiently on the Bentendo controller [the tap-tap-tap having been the background noise at the Yorozuya all day].
“I mean it!” fumes Gintoki, pointing the pan like a weapon. “I’ll throw you out into the goddamned street, you worthless terrorist!”
“Nn.”
“I work all day and night, slave my youth away to bring wages into this godforsaken house -”
“Nn.”
“- and you, you ungrateful asshole, don’t even have the decency to cook dinner with the bounty of food my blood, sweat, and tears produced? Are you that shameless? Are you that rude? Are you that much of a leech on society?”
Zura gasps. He’s seen the error of his ways and is rightly appalled at himself. Gin-san is the victor.
“Where did that Goomba come from?”
Gintoki sees red.
The frying pan misses Zura’s head only because the taller man trips on the damn kimono Zura filched. It’s far too big on him, even though he’s wearing it as it’s never been worn [ie; correctly]. As the Yorozuya picks himself up off the floor, he glowers at the mocking, light-blue swirls. It figures the moron can’t even wear it hanging loose and seductive, with slivers of pale, lickable inner thigh showing, like in any doujin worth the judging eyes of a middle-aged check-out woman.
There is no teasing inner thigh, no coy bare shoulder. Zura just looks like a potato sack. A potato sack that possibly belongs to Gintoki.
He frowns, suddenly feeling flustered.
“Potato sack bastard,” he mutters, too loudly. After a moment, he grumbles, “Go to two player mode.”
“Nn,” hums Zura, pushing the second controller towards him with his foot.
-+-+-+-
“Gin-san,” intones Shinpachi, sounding deceptively calm. “I know you wouldn’t call me and make me come all the way over from my house, without there being a real emergency.”
“Do you hear my stomach growling? It could become feral. This is an emergency.”
“Red turtle shells do not constitute an emergency!”
The Yorozuya snaps, “Oi oi, Shinpachi, what the hell do you mean red turtle shells aren’t an emergency? They’re heat-seeking! They won’t rest until your car is overturned and your character is frustrated!”
“Cook your own damn - ”
“They have the ability to knock you from first to eighth!”
“Why eighth!?Are you making a rank joke? Are you saying I got hit by a red turtle shell, and knocked into eighth place?!”
“Aa, who put that banana there? Zura, don’t litter so thoughtlessly.”
“It’s not Zura, it’s Katsura.”
“Don’t ignore me, you assholes!” Shinpachi takes a deep breath. He counts to ten, and then says in a monotone, “I’m not making dinner for two perfectly capable adults playing Bentendo Mario Cars.”
“I’m not capable,” says Gintoki, frantically pressing A. “I’m too busy helping Princess Peach redefine gender roles. Do you hate women, Pattsuan?”
“I am not capable either,” adds Zura flatly. “I have to keep an eye on Luigi-san. The pressures of being second fiddle have become too much. He is on suicide-watch.”
Shinpachi makes dinner.
-+-+-+-
“Stop being a stubborn asshole,” he mumbles against the other’s ear, hands grasping [and alright, groping, so sue him]. It’s difficult, trying to pull Zura [who fights him, every inch of the goddamned way] onto his futon. “Would you just - she’s asleep, you idiot.”
“How do you know?”
“Because when she’s awake, she’s breaking things, and I don’t hear anything breaking. So she’s asleep.”
“That’s the stupidest - ah.” The smaller man stops struggling for a moment, distracted by the hard kisses down along his neck. Well-aware of the miniscule window of opportunity he has, Gintoki tugs the idiot flush against his front, pressing more sucking bites to the sensitive skin of the rebel’s nape. But just as his hand slips inside the collar of the kimono [pulling it wide under the guise of kissing], Zura remembers that he’s incurably annoying and starts trying to clamber away again. “Let me go -”
Resisting the urge to punch the jackass is hard. “No. Shut up.” He gives the exposed [success!] shoulder a sharp nip, directing attention away from his wandering hands. “You have to prove your worth in this household if you want to stay. It’s this or cleaning the gutters.”
“Ah? I’ll go get the ladder.”
“I have something else for you to climb.”
“What did you just -”
“Nothing. What did you do, triple knot this belt?”
“A samurai should make every effort to look presentable.”
“My ass, this thing would just fall off your womanly figure if you didn’t - ”
“Do you want to die? I’ll kill you.”
“This is my dying wish, then.” He finally manages some leverage, rolling the smaller man effectively underneath him, and shuts the annoying prattle up with a firm kiss. He waits for it, waits for it- and there it is, that moment when whatever inane thoughts are rattling around inside Zura’s head quiet, when he relaxes in Gintoki’s arms and soft lips open under his own. It’s heady, the knowledge that only he can silence the unending stream of nonsense and politics that pour out from the other samurai.
The quiet shifting of the knot’s fabric falling apart is even headier, and his hands immediately seek out warm skin. Call him a pervert, but he also thoroughly enjoys the fact that even after all this stupid, stupid time, the expanses of skin usually hidden under thick layers of kimono have only been touched by he and he alone. Getting Zura into bed is a very, very exclusive club, and Gintoki intends to exercise his VIP perks tonight.
“Gin-chan?”
Or not.
Zura promptly goes stiff underneath him [in the way Gintoki doesn’t want] and shoves him off rather roughly just as the door slides open.“Gin-chan,” yawns a sleepy Kagura, rubbing her eyes, “I had a nightmare.”
“I don’t care,” mumbles Gintoki, pulling his blanket up protectively and picturing Saigou in a thong. “You deserved a nightmare for eating half of my breakfast this morning. You have learned a valuable lesson, Kagura; stealing a man’s bacon leads only to your own suffering.”
“Gintoki,” mutters Zura disapprovingly.
“Ugh, fine, shut up.” He pinches the bridge of his nose. “Tell me about your bacon-stealing-induced nightmare.”
Kagura sits on the floor beside them and begins detailing a nightmare involving Sadaharu getting cannibalized by mole people. Zura nods and gasps in all the right places not because he is good with children, but because he’s gotten caught up in the tragic tale; Gintoki falls into a doze.
At the end of it all, Kagura says, “I’m worried I might be a prophetess, yup. This old lady has seen too much not to consider it! Ne, Gin-chan?” Zura kicks him beneath the sheets to get his attention. “What do you think?”
Gintoki continues laying there with his eyes closed. “There’s nothing to worry about. It’s only a reflection of your damaged psyche, gone beyond repair.”
“What’s a -”
“Let’s just get you a glass of water,” sighs Zura, getting out of the futon.
-+-+-+-
Reality comes unpleasantly knocking the very next evening.
He’s flipped the ‘closed’ sign on the door, and Kagura and Shinpachi are out to dinner with Shinpachi’s gorilla sister [at least bananas are supposed to be a good source of potassium]. Gintoki finds Zura on the couch, sitting primly with his hands in his lap, bathed in the off-blue glow of the television.
On the screen, there is a riot.
“Eighteen injured today in the altercation between what appears to be an up-and-coming Amanto street gang and the resident human…”
“Oi,” says Gintoki. Zura doesn’t hear him, eyes fixed on the news coverage. Thin fingers knot themselves as the camera pans over a young Japanese youth with bandages wrapped all around his head. “Oi,” Gintoki says again. When Zura still doesn’t respond, he flops on the couch next to the other man.
The riot is revealed to be unrelated to the Jouishishi, but Zura’s concern [etched across his brow plain and bold] doesn’t fade. If anything, he may be even more upset at the fact - there had been innocent civilians injured, both Amanto and human in species. Although Zura has never known their names until seeing the scrolling bar of kanji across the bottom of the screen, his heart is on his sleeve [and it’s trailing blood from fresh wounds]. There is nothing he could have done, even if he had been there, and he knows it. Practicality and hopelessness war on his face.
The Yorozuya feels a sick, clenching feeling in his stomach. In one swift movement, he swings his legs up, lying down on the couch with his head in the smaller man’s lap. They watch TV in silence until the report is long over and One Park is well underway.
“Your head is heavy,” Zura complains softly. “My legs are falling asleep.”
“Stop whining,” Gintoki returns flatly, although he’s thinking whatever it takes to keep you here.
-+-+-+-
Stir-craziness seems to set in shortly after. Gintoki almost feels like saying something about the patience of the samurai or whatever Zura usually can’t stop flapping his mouth about, but the way the smaller man paces back and forth to the window [the drawn tightness to his mouth] derails the comment every time.
“I think tomorrow,” he says to Gintoki one morning, in that wistful, soft tone the Yorozuya hates.
“You don’t think any day, why should tomorrow be any different?” he grumbles in return, sticking his face back into an old copy of Jump. Kanda Yuu’s a right bastard with stupid hair, sure, but he probably never sounds like that, enduring and fragile all at once. Naruto probably never sounds like that, either. Why can’t Zura be more like Naruto? Why couldn’t the wigged idiot be obsessed with becoming Hokage instead of obsessed with committing enough treason to be execu -
- Whatever. Ramen is better than soba, in any case.
He hears him talking on the phone that night. “I’m just checking my horoscope,” the rebel had informed he and Kagura loudly (although nobody had asked).
“Don’t use my phone for that useless shit,” he’d returned. “Do you know how much it costs? I don’t have yen coming out of my ears, oi, or anywhere else for that matter.”
“My horoscope said I’m going to get new clothes soon, yup.”
“Aa?! You’re calling that crook hotline too?! And what kind of horoscope is that? That’s just a blatant eventuality!”
“Blue is this month’s power colour, ahuh. Mommy, I want to go school shopping, and get a blue pencil case. It’s my destiny to become more powerful.”
“It’s not Mommy, it’s - ”
“You don’t go to school, schools don’t allow apes in the classroom. Everyone shut up, it’s back on.”
Gintoki wanted to listen to the TV, but Zura’s wig-stink waves must have been disrupting the sound waves in the room. There could be no other explanation as to why he found himself concentrating very, very hard on the hushed conversation.
“I see” and “Aa” had dominated Zura’s end of the dialogue, although the “No, I understand it’s not a good time,” with that goddamn bullshit tone, brands itself into Gintoki’s head. He knows it probably means he’ll have to continue putting up with that asshole using more than his fair share of the hot water in the morning, but truthfully that’s not what agitates him. It sounds like their mutual horoscope - it’s not a good time for Zura and he to be whatever Zura and he are, might never be a good time at this rate, the way the reckless moron was going. At the rate Zura was going, he’d be ki - …he’d never become Hokage.
Gintoki’s annoyed because it’d just be simpler if Zura was more like Naruto. That’s all.
A few minutes later, the Yorozuya listens to another call of Zura’s, and can hear the automated voice on the other line.
“I said don’t use my phone for that useless shit! What the hell is a power colour anyway?!”
-+-+-+-
Zura’s still there that night. Lying on the adjacent futon, Gintoki wants to kiss him or punch him, but compromises with himself and does neither. Instead, he runs a rough, heavy hand down the side of Zura’s face. Silent, the other man turns into it as if it were a tender kiss [or a well-deserved punch].
It’s not a matter of waiting for the right time, he knows. That’s a stupid way to think about it. Hell, even if there never is a right time, he doesn’t care. He doesn’t care about the Joui, or about saving Japan, or about how Zura might never get his head out of his stupid ass and stop living in the past.
He knows what he does care about. And he’s not going to let a single moment of it slip through his fingers doing something as useless as waiting.
When his palm rubs too rough along the side of Zura’s neck [still flawless, still free of any executioner’s nicks], the rebel responds with tired murmurs. Gintoki leans down to taste them, right now.
-+-+-+-
Settling back in is somewhat tentative, but it happens. Zura may be a gloomy, brainless, overdramatic moron with hair like a woman, but he’s also frustratingly solid, when it truly comes down to it. Zura makes plans, Zura waits for the opportune moment, Zura is annoyingly practical, for all his bomb-lobbing and extended inappropriate daydreams. If it’s not a good time, it’s simply not a good time.
That doesn’t mean it’s not a good time for other things. Such as indigestion.
“Shinpachiiii,” moans Kagura piteously to the balmy night sky. “My insides hurt. I need another kebob. I’m eating for two, yup.”
“Where did you hear that phrase!? That’s not something you should be saying, Kagura-chan! And if your stomach hurts, you need to stop eating, not eat more!”
“Catherine, Shinpachi’s trying to starve my baby.”
The older woman tsks, turning vegetables over on the grill. “That’s typical, haahn. Men are greedy, worthless bastards, they’ll take you for everything you’re worth.”
Gintoki ventures from his lawn chair, without opening his eyes, “Which, in your case, is about 300 yen.”
“What did you say, you shithead?! I’ll grill your ugly face up next!”
“Ugly face? Ugly face? At least my face has never been captured in a mug shot, you two-bit thief - ”
“Children,” drawls Otose in warning, a spark from her lighter flaring in the dim next to him. The streets are less lively than before, the festival day finally winding down. It’s nicer like this, without all the little brats running around, screaming about wishes and cowpies or whatever this stupid-ass holiday is about anymore. The buzz of the cicadas and the drowsy heat add to the atmosphere a lot more than the frantic consumer bustle of Edo’s populace.
It’s too bad the trees still look just as stupid as they had during the day, though. Like there’s little pieces of toilet paper fluttering off of them, in supplication of some god on high that blesses toilet paper rolls, so one doesn’t run out in an hour most dire.
“Sakata,” murmurs the old bag, the syllables rounded by her cigarette. “You should take some of those kebobs upstairs.”
His eyes still don’t open, which is more telling than if they’d blinked wide and darted suspiciously, like a Detective Conan villain. “The last time Sadaharu got a hold of a plate of kebabs, we were pulling sticks out of that goddamn monster’s ass like he was a Jenga tower. Nobody won that game, oi.”
The older woman ignores the deflection, dark nails tapping against a paper filter, a counter-rhythm to the cicada’s hum. “There’s an extra plate inside. Bring it up before it gets cold.”
“Nag, nag, nag. No wonder your husband checked out early, the silent grave was probably a welcome relief.” But he gets to his feet, palm rubbing the back of his head. The plate is retrieved, and he spends the next ten minutes arguing with Catherine over her cheap skewering [“Is that why you’re such a pain in the ass? Do you even know what real skewering is? When was the last time someone felt bad enough for you to show you a good skewering? No, no, I don’t want to hear it! Go drug an alley cat and have your way with the dumb beast!”]. Just as he rounds the stairs to the Yorozuya, the old woman’s raspy voice stops him again.
“Oh, and Sakata?”
He swivels. “Aa?”
“If my building gets blown up, I’ll show you real domestic terrorism, and strap dynamite to your worthless balls.”
-+-+-+-
“Fireworks?” questions the most immediate liability to Gintoki’s balls. He doesn’t look like such a grievously dangerous character at the moment; his eyes are still glazed from dozing in the bedroom, his hair cow licked, and a kebab half-falling apart in his hands [it’s really the worst skewering he’s ever seen, someone should set that useless burglar right with a spray bottle].
“Yeah.” He watches the other man struggle with a floppy zucchini slice. “…No one’ll see you on the roof,” he adds begrudgingly.
Zura gives him a strange look, and soon the three of them [Gintoki, Zura, and the Worst Kebab in Edo] have climbed up to the flat shingles of the Yorozuya. The rebel peers over the edge, watching Kagura chase an increasingly panicked Shinpachi with a sparkler. Nodding in something like approval, he then sits beside the already prone Gintoki, kimono and haori pooling across the dusty tiles.
Just as Zura opens his mouth, the taller samurai holds up his hand. “I don’t want to talk about wishes, or the folly of youth, or cowpies,” Gintoki stipulates.
“It’s not cowpies, it’s cowherds,” corrects Zura, bemused.
“I don’t care, they’re both off-limits. I didn’t bring you up here to be a gloomy, poetic bastard, you hear me?”
The long-haired man’s mouth quirks just barely enough for the trained eye to notice. “Is that so?”
“That’s what I said, lift that ugly shag rug up off your ears already.”
“What did you bring me up here for, then, Gintoki?”
The Yorozuya’s mouth contorts, and he turns his head to give his nose a thorough pick. Maybe he should give it a good blow on one of those toilet-paper trees later. “That’s the problem with you,” he informs the other man. “You go around challenging everything. Take a good look at where that’s gotten you, Zura.”
“Adjacent to a triple-threat of crusty bird defecation, listening to you ramble.”
“That’s right, h - what? No! No! It got you holed up in a room on a festival night.”
“But I’m not anymore. I am adjacent to a triple-threat of - ”
“Shut up, shut up, that’s not the point. You need to just accept things once in a while. Why did I bring you up to the roof? Because, don’t ask questions, just enjoy your goddamned kebab.”
The rebel says nothing, shifting his knees under his arms. The two sit quietly together, until a very soggy plop interrupts the cicadas’ song. “Gintoki,” murmurs Zura.
Gintoki shakes his head, heaving a sigh. “I know. That was your kebab, wasn’t it.”
“Aa.”
“Damnit.” He shifts a bit closer, his arm lightly wrapping around the other’s waist. Zura stays stiff for a moment, but then eases back, curving into his shoulder. “It just shows that you can’t depend on a soggy zucchini, I guess.”
“You’ve already shown me that,” responds Zura, in a low, rich tone that makes Gintoki blush.
“O-oi, what’s that supposed to mean? Are you trying to say my zucchini is anything but a robust pinnacle of a firm and dependable meal? It’s supposed to be a night of wishing, not lying. Get that smirk off your face.”
“Shhh,” breathes Zura. “It’s starting.” Gintoki can feel the rebel’s breath against his neck, and his arm tightens around that slim waist, hidden under layers of fabric. The bursts of colour light the sky, and he very seriously tries not to wonder how long it’s been since Zura’s gotten to watch fireworks, real ones, not ones peppered with chunks of official government buildings. That’s not the kind of thing he wants to think about, when there’s so many better things at hand [or increasingly heavy against his shoulder, warm and content and - chuckling?].
“Ah, don’t you wish, as I wish, that the folly of our youths was not wasting Tanabata thinking it was about cowpies…”
Gintoki smirks. “Shut up,” he mutters, cutting off the other’s amusement with an insistent kiss.
-+-+-+-
Somehow, it hasn’t happened once yet, not since the first night Zura stayed over. It seems ridiculous that they should actually [as Zura puts it, with the capitals blaring even verbally] “Do It” less when together under the same roof. Not for lack of wanting to; having the rebel around all the time would definitely be a trial too severe for Gintoki’s libido if it weren’t for Zura’s persistent bad habit of actually speaking. Gintoki can tell he himself is reaching a point that could only be called “critical” when he listens to Zura’s brain-dead musings on life, politics, and Ham-Hams in general, and still wants to stick his head under the other man’s kimono.
Even worse, he can tell Zura is nearing the end of that unfathomable patience with his Perfectly Natural Urges. It’s a lot less pronounced than Gintoki burning everyone’s breakfast because he’s trying to sneak a peak of the other man changing, sure. But it’s there, in the quick flicker of a lowered glance to Gintoki when Shinpachi and Kagura go to the grocer’s, or the way his body very quietly brims to the Yorozuya’s covert casual touches. They both want it, but it’s not happening.
Why?
Well, Gintoki won’t play the blame game, but it’s almost entirely without a shadow of a doubt all that goddamned shitty gorilla girl’s goddamned shitty gorilla fault.
In the darkened living room, with a movie faithfully ignored on the TV, he’ll drop a hand to Zura’s inner thigh, feel the other’s legs spread subtly as he pushes folds of fabric away and - there’s Kagura, bouncing over the back of the couch, asking if there’s popcorn or bon bons or salmon rolls, which they don’t even serve at movie theaters.
Before the sun’s quite risen, and Zura’s not awake enough yet to realise he’s making soft, fucking cute sounds as Gintoki sucks on the nape of his neck, grinding into him from behind - there’s Kagura, ripping the covers off the futon and informing Mama that radio exercises are just about to start, they need to get a move on if they’re gonna win the gold, yup.
Even in the shower, while Gintoki’s peering through the curtains at real-life Zura making funny, unattractive faces at himself in the mirror as he flosses, but thinking about what a man needs to think about during a dry-spell like this; and just as fantasy-life Zura bends over to show him just how authentic his school-girl disguise is, yes, yes, even down to the panties, which he begs so very sweetly for Gintoki to pull off with his mouth - there is Kagura, kicking in the door and strangling Gintoki with the shower curtain, because she’s been conscious for more than fifteen minutes and hasn’t eaten yet.
It’s no surprise that when Kagura asks for a sleepover at Shinpachi’s, Gintoki falls to his knees in front of the boy and hugs him hard enough for the boy’s spine to let out a protesting crack.
“I mean, it’s just that neither of us has had a sleepover before, and I’m pretty sure Ane-ue can’t physically poison her,” Shinpachi wheezes, once he’s been released.
“She did eat that bomb once,” interjects Zura calmly.
“I sure did!” chirps Kagura proudly. “I could eat another one right now, ahuh!”
“What are you doing,” Shinpachi demands flatly as Zura rifles obligingly through the sleeves of his kimono. “Stop it. You’ll have to help clean up the burnt vomit this time if you do. What is wrong with you?”
Gintoki, who isn’t listening, can’t stop smiling. “I don’t even care, feed her all the bombs you want, when are you leaving?”
Otae collects the two after she gets off work, and following a series of energetic door slams and lazy waving from the balcony, the little demonchild rides off on Sadaharu, Shinpachi and his sister trailing.
As soon as the door slides shut on the splinters it’s left in, Gintoki starts to move, but Zura holds up a hand.
“No,” he asserts. “Hold on a few more minutes.”
They wait the allotted comedic timing in silence. There are no cries of I forgot my toothbrush! or Sadaharu left his bowl, yup!, no pitter-patter of returning monster girl feet come to trample Gintoki’s dreams of getting some. There is nothing but utter quiet until Zura lowers his hand again.
“Thank god,” the rebel mutters. Gintoki lunges.
-+-+-+-
“Oh god,” the rebel chokes, fingernails gouging the sides of the Yorozuya’s desk. Gintoki works his fingers deeper, his other hand pressing on Zura’s sweat-slicked thigh, pinning the other man’s leg too high.
“How badly do you want it, aa? Aa?” Gintoki murmurs, leaning down to kiss the inside of his knee. “Zura?”
“Sh-shut up,” grits the other samurai. Something falls off the desk, clattering to the floor. “A-aah. Nnh.”
“Che, you’re still too tight. Stop being such a tightass, Zura.”
“Katsura.”
“Ah? What an ego you have.” He twists the fingers.
“Oh, ahn, Gintoki - ”
“Better.” He leans up for a biting kiss, the press causing Zura to slip along the desk and make a high noise in his throat. “I’m listening.”
The smaller man glowers up at him as best he can, although it’s hard to see much beyond the mussed hair and blushing face. The muscles in Zura’s leg twitch, and he produces very slowly, with utmost severity, “…I want it.”
“Mm?” Gintoki slips his fingers from inside the other, trailing the rough pads up along the innermost curve of the man’s body. Zura shivers hard, skin grating along the wood of the desk as he slides farther. “Want what?”
“You damn bastard, why do you always - I want it, do it already, you shitty perm - ”
Gintoki smirks down at the flushed, agitated [some might even say hot and bothered, oho] man beneath him, and swings a leg up onto the desk, clambering up. “I love it when you beg,” he mutters, somewhat to be an ass, but mostly because it’s true. After some mildly awkward shifting, and positioning his knee inside a half-open drawer, he adds, “Don’t you love it when I listen to you?”
Before Zura can snap a retort, Gintoki snaps his hips, and all Zura lets out is a loud, hoarse groan.
For all his talk, Gintoki has to try very hard not to lose it right then and there on the first few deep thrusts. Shit, he feels so fucking tight and good and the way he’s shuddering is - no, fuck, pull it together. He focuses instead on saying, “Nnh, come on Zura, keep it down, you’re lying low, remember?”
“Shut, up,” moans Zura. “Damnit, ah-aah. Aah! Harder - ”
If Zura doesn’t already love Gintoki listening, he probably changes his mind somewhere between then, and when they fall off the desk entirely.
-+-+-+-
At approaching three weeks of the rebel ‘s stay, there is definitely something of a comfortable routine established. Waking up next to Zura isn’t always a picnic [terrorists have highly-strung reflexes, and his fucking delightful good morning kisses are sometimes met with punches to the throat and a mumbled, remorseless apology], but it’s not so bad, either. Everyone seems to be getting along enough, anyway.
“You worthless, low-income bastard! Get out, get out of this house! If I see your miserable face again, I will put it through a meat grinder.”
Gintoki stops in his tracks on the threshold to the living room. He wiggles a pinky in his ear. “Excuse me, what did you just say, Zura? Kick you out into the cold night like the useless, bomb-happy bum you are? Rub your face in the steaming pile Sadaharu left in the gutter, while I’m at it?”
“Gin-chan, shut up,” responds Kagura distractedly. The Yorozuya leans over the back of the couch, surveying the scene; Shinpachi lies on the far couch, reading a fan magazine. The Yato and Zura are on the floor, each holding one of the girl’s Tea Time Twosome doll set. There are several alarming things to attend to, and Gintoki figures he should start quickly, as he might not have time to cover all points.
“Oi oi oi, why is Himiko-chan’s shirt off?! What the hell kind of game are you playing?!”
“Himiko-chan’s being the husband, yup,” Kagura explains. “So we took her shirt off.”
“What?! That’s not how it works - ”
“Gin-san, I already tried,” Shinpachi says flatly from behind his magazine. “It’s no use. Just ignore them.”
It seems like good advice [amazing advice, really, if only he’d known it the very first time he met either of the brain-dead idiots], and his blood sugar’s feeling a little low, so Gintoki aborts the tirade.
As he heads to the kitchen, the drama of the living room continues, with Kagura’s voice booming.
“I own this house, you damn horseface! I own this house and everything in it, ahuh! You think I don’t know you only married me for my money?”
“Aa? What money? You insist on losing all our money gambling and drinking!”
“It’s my money to begin with! I’ll wipe my ass with it if I want, yup!”
“This is sick,” mutters Gintoki. “This is really sick. What kind of child plays like this? Zura, stop encouraging her.”
“It’s not Zura, it’s Mrs. Mr. Himiko-chan.”
Gintoki slams his glass down onto the counter. “You morons didn’t even change her name? It’s still Himiko-chan? Do either of you even know the difference between boys and girls, aa?”
“Ch, of course I do. Boys have big, hairy - ”
“Kagura-chaaan!”
“ - stupid nostrils, that go hoonf hoonf.” She lifts up Mr. Himiko-chan. “Hoonf, hoonf. And why isn’t my dinner ready, you lazy cow?”
“It would already be done if you hadn’t felt the need to berate me the moment you walked in the door, you drunken fool.”
Mr. Himiko-chan is lifted, and begins battering Mrs. Mr. Himiko-chan over the head with her torso. “I don’t want your lousy excuses, woman! Get me my dinner, now, ahuh, or I’ll do to you what I did to our dog!”
“Itaai, itaaaai!” As one doll hits the other, Gintoki’s palm hits his face. “Your dinner is right here, it’s right here!”
Then, Kagura makes horrible, nightmare-spawning mouth gnashing noises, which Gintoki considers the normal eating sound effects for the common Yato. A few moments later, the girl lets out a blood curdling yowl. Shinpachi fumbles his magazine, Sadaharu hits his head on the bottom of the kotatsu, and the Yorozuya feels the hair on the back of his neck raise. “Oi!”
“It’s poison sukonbu! You poisoned me, you bitch!”
“Fu fu fu,” Zura’s doll responds. “And now what’s left of your money is all mine. This is for Wags-kun.”
“I’ll… I’ll see you both… in hell…!” The girl smashes Mr. Himiko-chan into the floor, and then sits back, looking at Zura. “Now Mrs. Mr. Himiko-chan has to chop up the body and get rid of it in the river, yup.”
“I’m not letting you watch any more late night TV,” says Gintoki dully. He sees now, why brave, noble Shinpachi had had no choice but to strive for ignorance. “You can put Himiko-chan’s corpse back in her box. It’s time to eat, wash the blood off your hands.”
The girl gets to her feet, collects the murdering wife from Zura, and tosses both dolls into her cupboard. Shinpachi chastises her, getting up from the couch to put the dolls away properly and lecture her on caring for her things [like he always does] while Kagura ignores him and walks away [like she always does].
Gintoki harrumphs as Zura joins him in the kitchen, to wash his own hands. “Do you need any help?”
“No thanks, I’m not sick of not having explosive diarrhea yet. I know you only ask because I won’t ever say yes, you jackass.” The rice cooker’s light blinks off, and Gintoki reaches around Zura for the rice scoop. “You know what you could do to help? Start paying me back for all of my food you keep shoving in your mouth.”
“Ah, put it on my tab.”
“Tab? You can’t have a tab. A tab would mean you’re a regular, and I don’t plan on letting you drag me into your terrorist shit again, so you can’t have a tab.”
“Hn. That smells good.”
“Don’t change the subject.” The rice is plopped unceremoniously into four bowls. He hasn’t made a mistake in portioning since the first week, although he should, the greedy, thankless asshole.
Zura moves away, clearing the kotatsu of debris, one of the very few dinner-related tasks he is allotted. “Which subject? I am best at Japanese and History.”
“Your brain is what’s history, oi.” The second, better pork omelet finishes [the first one is definitely going to Zura, who doesn’t deserve a soft, creamy omelet, and Kagura, who barely lets food touch her tongue before it plummets down her gullet anyway]. He sections them into the bowls, and Zura promptly picks up two, carrying them to the table, Gintoki following with the second two. “Shinpachi! Kagura! - Oh.”
Returned from the bathroom, the boy scowls from beneath sopping bangs, wiping his glasses on his hakama. Zura seats himself at the table, Kagura joining him, and comments, “Ah, puberty. I will add ‘antiperspirant’ to the grocery list.”
“It’s not sweat! Why would you think it’s sweat?! She tried to drown me!”
“I saw something in the drain, Gin-chan! Shinpachi was too cowardly to look, too. I had to force him into manhood, ahuh.”
“Ah, puberty,” nods Gintoki.
“Knock it off! Didn’t you guys hear me calling for help?!”
“No. We were having a very important grown-up discussion.”
“That,” intones Kagura, cheeks already full with rice, “means they were having an argument, Shinpachi-kun. It’s a shame nobody can put the work in to make it work, like in the old days.”
“What do you know about the old days, you brat? Eat your damn rice.”
Shinpachi reaches for the soy sauce, muttering bitterly, “So a dumb argument’s more important than me drowning. What was it this time, Gin-san? Did Katsura-san make another bad gum gum fruit pun? Did he insult your hair? Did he insult your - ”
“It was about money,” Zura interjects, unruffled, bold as brass and equally as unintelligent. Kagura’s eyes go wide.
“Arguing about money before dinner…?” She stares down at what’s left of her rice bowl, and then lets out another blood curdling wail, dropping her chopsticks. “Poison! It’s poison! Gin-chan, how could you?!”
“It’s not rice, it’s poison?!” Zura shouts back, and then clutches his stomach. “A-ah, only now, far too late, do I see…! Eliminating the witnesses and the culprit in one fell swoop! The inhumanity of such an evil mastermind…!”
“Oi, I’ll show you inhumanity if you both don’t shut up already and eat!” Gintoki rails, but it’s too late. Kagura has decided the rice is poison, and Zura’s feeble mind has been convinced. They sink to the floor, wailing and making last wishes.
“Kagura-chan, a pork omelet with rice is what you’d be having right now if you weren’t goofing off, it’s not a good dying request. It’s not a good dying request to begin with,” Shinpachi deadpans. “Is this how it is? Everyone gets riled over a fake poisoning, but a real drowning gets nothing? Is this how it really is?”
Gintoki shakes his head over his bowl, attempting to belatedly take Shinpachi’s well-given advice, but it’s no use. Try as he might, to ignore their bleating is not an option. All three of them are obnoxious and loud, and he’s probably going to get a stomachache from their idiocy, because his intestines were distracted off their game. Then, in her flailing, Kagura ends up knocking over her bowl and snorting rice up her nose, and Shinpachi laughs, and Zura smiles, helping his fallen comrade up and producing a hanky.
He’ll probably get a stomachache, but… it’s really not so bad.
-+-+-+-
A day later, when the three come back from a client’s house, Zura’s not there anymore.
The extra futon is nowhere in sight, and the video games have all been put away. Sadaharu looks like he’s seen some kind of affectionate war, with his fur sticking up in all directions from excessive petting.
The house isn’t any less quiet, any less lively. They do as they always do - Gintoki says he’s watching TV but only dozes, Kagura says she’s cleaning but only breaks things, Shinpachi says he’s balancing the check book but only has several minor coronary seizures. It’s exactly how it was before Zura climbed in his window and made unreasonable terrorist demands, so it shouldn’t feel any different now.
He’s glad to be rid of the other man, really. He was getting tired of pulling long, black hair out of the drain, and of fighting over the remote control, and of listening to the idiot’s ridiculous out-of-touch prattle, and of -
“Gin-san,” says Shinpachi, breaking the line of thought. “That’s not right.”
Gintoki looks down, where he’d been portioning dinner into four plates, and frowns.
-+-+-+-
The bedroom feels bigger that night, which is stupid. It’s just because the futon is squarely in the middle of the room again, and he’s not so close to the wall, so the room itself looks larger. It has nothing to do with anything else, certainly not anything that matters.
It definitely has nothing to do with anyone he’d shared a musty childhood bedroom with, and later a cramped and crumpling tent, and later still the noisy upper floor of a Yorozuya, if only for just under a month.
Thunk.
“Ow, shit,” comes a voice that has nothing to do with the sudden, warming spike in his pulse.
“Get out,” he says to the ceiling immediately. “Haven’t we seen enough of eachother? Are the police outside?”
“No,” says Zura [to which question, Gintoki isn’t sure]. His hands are chill from the night air, and the white-haired man turns his cheek into their touch. Zura’s obi brushes against his forearm as the other shifts down onto the futon, and it’s all Gintoki needs to loop that arm around the smaller samurai, pulling him in.
“So,” murmurs Gintoki, once he’s got Zura twined around him like a particularly attractive vine.
“So,” agrees Zura calmly, those cool fingers curling against Gintoki’s chest, spreading just under Gintoki’s jaw.
“…Ready to start working off that tab?”
There’s punches, but there’s laughter too, and it’s got everything to do with what matters.