fic: gintama - yet someone told me
Title: yet someone told me
Fandom: Gintama
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: Gintoki/Katsura, but the main characters are Sakamoto and Katsura.
Disclaimer: Gintama is as much mine as a well-adjusted sleep schedule. Morning!
Feedback: A high five, a slap in the face, hit me with it.
Notes: Inspired by and written to "Quelqu'un Ma Dit" - Carla Bruni. Translated lyrics here.
Cross-posted at ginzura & gintama.
They’re going to drink too much, and speak of things he doesn’t want to, and his sandals are going to get vomited on. He knows all of this in vivid detail the moment the damn afro is let in. Katsura’s followers are traitors, every single one of them, to deliver him into the hands of such an idiot drunk.
“Zura, Zura, you need to loosen up!” is the declaration of the evening, and the rebel tries not to notice the way his men smile gratefully at Sakamoto, and shake his hand a little too warmly. Refusing the invitation on those grounds alone is impossible.
It’s really just unforgivable.
They’ve had too much to drink. It’s fortunate when the waitress, no longer deeming Sakamoto’s ample wallet worth the aggravation, strides off after a resounding slap.
“Can’t you behave yourself?” murmurs Katsura, sinking into his cup of sake. “She is likely someone’s wife.”
The younger man laughs, rubbing his cheek. “I know that’s your thing, Zura - ”
“Katsura.”
“ - but I’m not into that! Married, unmarried, who cares, huh? A man can’t help being in love. He just knows!”
“Aa?” drawls the rebel dryly. “So, ‘are you still serving dumplings, no, can I see yours then?’ is what one says to their beloved?”
Sakamoto grins, waving a hand. “Ahaha! It’s an ice-breaker, an ice-breaker! You gotta save the good stuff for later on.”
Katsura gives a dismissive snort, reaching for the bottle. The merchant’s grin wattage reduces to a smile, and he ruffles Katsura’s hair too roughly. Sake spills onto the smooth wood of the bar. “You shouldn’t frown so much. You could get wrinkles. And women only tolerate wrinkles on their husband’s - ”
“Tatsuma.”
“ - I was going to say their husband’s father! Ahaha, you don’t have much faith in me.”
“Why should I, hn?”
“Because I’m buying the next round! Ahaha!”
“I just think,” mumbles Zura, aware that he is far, far too drunk now, “I just think you could do it better. I wish you could stay and help me do it better - ”
“I can’t stay,” smiles the other man, and those ridiculous sunglasses are off now, lying in the splashes of sake on the bar top. Tatsuma was always the most youthful in age and spirit, the prized youngest child of a long-disbanded family of brothers. Now, Katsura can see, deep blue eyes have matured far beyond that adolescent station. “You know my cause is up there now.”
“I know. …I’m sorry. I’ve had too much.”
“Even if there’s too much, you’re not on your own down here, aa?”
“He doesn’t want to help. He doesn’t want anything to do with - ” an awkward, too-obvious pause, “ - the cause.”
“I didn’t say anything about help.” Sakamoto picks up his glasses, tucks them in his scarf. The hand falls back onto the rebel’s shoulder. “I just said you weren’t alone.”
Katsura can’t quite manage a smile, but fills his comrade’s cup (as Sakamoto overflows those of everyone around him).
“He still loves you, you know,” the taller man slurs into his ear, alcohol-heavy and warm in the October chill.
Katsura’s heart is suddenly in his throat, so he can’t seem to swallow the thick, clumsy word. “Why?”
“Aaah,” sighs Sakamoto, “Zura, Zura, a man can’t help being in love. He just knows.”
He then throws up onto Katsura’s sandals.
It’s really just unforgivable.
Sleeping beside Sakamoto is surprisingly calming. He doesn’t snore, doesn’t elbow or kick, and he doesn’t curl up behind Katsura like a second skin, breathing sugar-sweet breath into the crook of his neck.
He just sleeps.
Even so, Katsura doesn’t.
The morning is bright and brittle. Sakamoto jostles him awake, and Katsura startles like an animal, reaching automatically for the sheath beside his pillow. The action feels too telling and he’s, for just a moment, deeply ashamed, but the other man only laughs more. “Ahaha, whoah whoah, I didn’t do anything weird! I remembered in time, Zura, relax.”
“Katsura,” he grunts groggily. “Wait, what?”
He ends up using the sword anyway.
Katsura knows Sakamoto saw his new scars. As far as the rebel could tell, Sakamoto doesn’t have any new ones.
He’d like to think that means space is far less dangerous than he’s heard about.
He knows it’s because Sakamoto is far more dangerous than space has heard about.
“Ahaha, wow, it’s so lively!” the merchant chirps, trekking down the crowded main street alongside him. His strides are longer than Katsura’s, but slower, too. Sakamoto always enjoys the journey, and this one is no exception. “It’s just like how I remembered it! - Except for you, hahaha, I would have remembered you, marry me? No? How about just a honeymoon, then?”
Katsura tunes out the other’s rejection, casting a critical eye up from beneath his hat. He feels his jaw tighten, the hilt of his katana boring into his palm. “How can this be how you remembered Edo?” he spits, sharp enough to send the uninterested girl on her way.
Everything Katsura sees is tainted with foreign influence. He crosses streets with Amanto who may have killed tens of his comrades with their own hands, hundreds of his countrymen with their hands on advanced tech.
The same breed of tech they are now selling to widows and fatherless children, as if to fill that void left behind. His voice is laced with regret. “This isn’t Edo as it was.”
Sunglasses and smile impassive, the taller man informs him, “Really? It smells like it,” and guides them to a food stall. “Hey, no matter how much ginger you put on gyoza, it’s still gyoza, right?”
“I don’t like ginger,” he responds flatly. Sakamoto snorts, clapping a wide palm onto the top of Katsura’s head.
“Sure, but don’t let that stop you from enjoying the smell of fresh gyoza, huh? Ahaha, good afternoon! Four please!”
They go past the snack shop Gintoki’s been staying at without breaking stride. Katsura doesn’t look at Sakamoto or the shop front. He watches his feet, taking even steps, one in front of the other.
One, two.
One, two.
One, two.
It looks so easy.
When they rest in the park, the taller man unfurls like a bloom in the sun. His skin’s gotten paler, up on the ship - he used to be tannest of them all. Sakamoto was brown as a nut all summer and winter, like he’d absorbed the beams themselves and held onto them.
His own skin has always been pale. In the war, bruises showed up on it every day, like carefree splotches of water paint. They were haphazard and colourful, sometimes even playful, especially when left from smirking teeth or sucking lips, and stroked with a tongue as deft as a paintbrush.
Things have changed, even their bodies say. Sakamoto’s skin looks light as a newborn star, and Katsura’s is starving to death for colour.
Sakamoto goes out again once they return, rambling about a ship engine mechanic he hasn’t seen in awhile and stealing Katsura’s gloves. The rebel elects to stay in and do laundry. Although he receives an inscrutable look, he isn’t argued with, and soon the creaky front door slides shut behind his old comrade.
Katsura brings the basket of damp clothes outside, steps up on a rock that has been worn down by someone else’s sandals to reach the wash line. With methodical, fluid movements, the contents of the basket are transferred; an old, soggy yukata, a kimono with dark sauce still vaguely staining the collar, a white towel with eyes and a yellow beak.
Wind ripples along the row once he’s finished his task, and he watches the muted colours sway heavily. It’ll be a long while before they’re dried in the weakness of this light - all there is to do is wait.
Vaguely, he knows it’s a dream. Even though everything is the same - the clothes line, the worn stone, the faded light of the autumn sky - he knows it’s a dream. He knows he finished this chore and sat down on the porch, so he shouldn’t still be attending to it, putting up kimono after kimono. The basket doesn’t seem to end for a long time, and when it finally does, his hand plunges into water.
“ - Ah?”
As he leans over to peer in the basket, drops splash onto the smooth surface of the deep puddle inside. Stupidly, he looks up for rain, but there isn’t any - the drops came from his hair. It dawns on him then that he’s become completely soaked.
With a logic that seems undeniable, Katsura steps back onto the stone. He then reaches up to the top of the wooden post, and hauls himself up onto the laundry line.
“You won’t get dry like that, stupid,” comes a low, indolent drawl. “Oi, come down. Your wig’ll fly away.”
“Shut up,” says Katsura. His hands tighten on his washing line perch. “I have to wait.”
“No you don’t.” The man beneath him slides a hand beneath his kimono, up his shin. Katsura wobbles dangerously, disturbing all the clothes on the cord, but he can’t move away. He can fall backwards or forwards, and that tone is becoming more inviting.
Although he sees the other below him, the words somehow come hot and rich against his ear. “Come on, Zura. Come down here. I’ll warm you up - ”
“Shit,” Katsura blurts, as his head skids off the wooden support beam of the porch. “Shit,” he adds eloquently, his neck letting him know of the awkward position he’d dozed off in. He feels sick. He feels like he has vertigo.
“ - Ahaha, there you are!” He almost winces. Sakamoto seems so loud after the simple stillness of that late afternoon (after the low murmurs in the back of his mind). The sun’s petered out almost completely by now, dusk rolling in like a cool stranger. “I got you a doggy bag from Wataru!”
“Ah… thank you. Where is it?”
“At Wataru! Ahaha, sorry. The imported beer got the best of me, Zura.”
“Katsura.” He doesn’t feel alert enough to speak with Sakamoto yet, worries the perceptive eyes of the younger man will see traces of a white kimono, hanging in the air beside the laundry. He looks away from the spot in question, kneading his sore neck. “How was…” He’s forgotten his name. “…Your friend?”
A cloud of alcohol hits him as Sakamoto sits down. His foggy mind supplies the imagery of a distillery inside that enormous, ridiculous afro. “Aaah, just great! He’s getting married, though, so he wasn’t much for girl hunting. Don’t you think it should be the opposite way?”
“What?”
“You know - a lot of girls to give him the proper ‘send off,’ ahaha!”
“No. That’s not how it works at all, you idiot.” Katsura pushes his hair back, almost expecting his fingers to come away damp. “If he has one… he should be with his one and only.”
There’s a small moment of silence, and then Sakamoto’s arm fwumps onto his shoulders, yanking him into a one-armed hug. “Haha, is that how it is?” The other man’s voice is fond, reassuring, and Katsura feels his stomach unclench, just a little. “You’d never expect a guy with a face like yours to be such a softie, ahahaha.”
“It’s not softie, it’s Katsura.” The taller man only chuckles more, and they watch the last of the sun filter down below the cheap garden fence quietly. When the rebel shifts to warm his hands within his sleeves, Sakamoto tilts his head.
“Hmmm? Are you cold? Looks like we should warm you up.”
Katsura’s eyes widen and then close, mouth drawing tight as he nods. “…Aa.”
“Oh, uh, well, it appears that your gloves are at Wataru too… ahaha, sorry?”
The relieved exhale wavers painfully, but there’s just enough laughter in it to keep him from attempting to climb up alongside a soggy yukuta. “Let’s just go inside.”
Sakamoto lies on the futon belly-down, fiddling with a strange little device. “What is it?” Katsura asks haltingly, snuffing out the room’s candles.
“This? It’s - sort of multi-purpose.” He turns the matte metallic object around, showing Katsura a screen. It’s lit up, and colourful. “See, I can get in contact with my assistant if I press this, and check the progress of my clients’ orders if I press this, and find out where the best hostess bars in the galaxy are if I enable this, and then go here!” He beams. “Oh, and right now I’m setting the alarm clock! Mutsu’ll have my balls if I’m late, ahah… ha…”
“You’re leaving already?” asks the rebel, and he immediately wishes he could retract the statement, say something more neutral, less obvious.
Of course, the taller man just grins. “Ahaha, gonna miss me, Zura?”
“Katsura. Tch, who would? Do this world a favour and fall out of an airlock.”
“Ahaha! So cold, so cold! It’s a good thing I know you don’t mean that, or my feelings would be hurt!”
“A talking afro doesn’t have feelings,” mumbles Katsura, suddenly feeling exhausted. He flops down onto the futon beside Sakamoto rather gracelessly, hair settling around his face like a mourning shroud.
Impertinent as always, the blue-eyed man lifts a forelock, peering at him with a too-knowing smile. “What’s with this gloomy atmosphere of yours, huh? You’ll make me feel guilty.”
Katsura squints his eye shut to the other’s scrutiny. He knows he’s being stupid. He doesn’t care. “A talking afro doesn’t have feelings,” he repeats gruffly.
“You could come with me,” comes the other’s smooth voice, stark and sincere.
“No, I couldn’t,” he responds thickly. His shoulders hunch tighter, as if he’s re-positioning himself under the weight of that burden he took up all too quickly. He knows he won’t be rid of it. He may lose everything else, everyone else, but he won’t ever be able to put that duty aside. “You know I couldn’t.”
Sakamoto shifts, suddenly pulling him to his chest. A wide, square hand strokes down the rebel’s spine, slow and firm. It’s shameful, completely lacking in dignity, but Katsura thaws to it, and presses his face to the other man’s throat. “I know you couldn’t,” affirms Sakamoto quietly, almost wryly.
Katsura isn’t prepared for it when he adds, “Ahah, he’d never forgive me.”
He wakes jarringly to the other’s alarm and finds himself tangled up with Sakamoto like a littermate (like dogs of war at rest). Despite the acute prickling of his own awkward skin, he doesn’t pull away. It’s warm and …peaceful, like this. It reminds him of the war in a way that doesn’t make loss and weariness ache in his gut. It reminds him of having a family.
Aside from the stupid, noisy alarm.
“Tatsuma,” he whispers, once he’s had enough of it. Out of practice, his hand shifts tentatively up, ruffles the other’s ridiculous hair. “Tatsuma, you’re going to be late.” When he receives no response, the gentle fingers turn rough, yanking at the brown tufts unforgivingly. “Wake up, asshole.”
“M’up, m’up,” hums Sakamoto. He slaps around over their heads for his device, shutting off the trilling alarm. He then picks it up and surveys the screen, pressing various buttons as he scratches a very private area below the sheets. Katsura resolves to do laundry again as soon as possible.
“Hahaha, oops,” the businessman says.
“ - Oops?” repeats Katsura uncertainly.
“Oops, haha!” The taller man disengages with a lanky stretch, and Katsura is pleasantly surprised to find his limbs still feel warm and relaxed. “Looks like I forgot a delivery.”
“Oh.” Katsura blinks, not even trying to feign surprise. “Is that a problem?”
“Nah, nah, I’m sure everything will work out for the best, ahaha!”
“Ah, well, your assistant - ”
“ - Just sent me a picture of her new steel-toed boots! Wow, how stylish! Those spikes look really long - ahahaha… ahaha… ha… hey, Zura, could you do me a favour?”
After seeing the other man off at the Terminal, and giving an impromptu blessing to a crowd of devotees whom recognized his monks’ robes, he peers down at the scribbled address. On the scrap of paper, Sakamoto’s handwriting is boxy and energetic, like the hands that wrote the words themselves.
As he walks, he turns the nameless envelope over in his other hand, wondering if it’s money to hush up some sort of sexual harassment lawsuit. But when he goes by six different cabaret girls clubs without seeing the address, his fears of an angry floral kimono-clad mob subside.
He then wonders if it’s a check to that mechanic friend of his, if maybe that meeting had been just as much business as pleasure. Sakamoto hasn’t been shy as an investor of new businesses, especially not those who could scratch his back in return later on. But he goes through the merchant’s district, too, without finding his match, and sets that theory aside as well.
Fleetingly, he wonders if it’s a love letter. He then chides himself - Sakamoto didn’t think with his heart, he thought with his pants, and what was in his pants had no business writing letters.
When he finally finds his way to the marked address, his stomach drops into his sandals. It’s not as much as a figure of speech as he might have thought it’d be - it literally feels as if every step he takes towards the door is squashing his innards together.
But he has a - duty. Sakamoto has given him a duty, and if he doesn’t have his duty, he has (is) nothing. He has to move forward. He has to follow this through.
One, two.
One, two.
One, two.
He knocks with a hand that fights trembling, and the door slides open.
“Zura?” Gintoki startles, clear surprise written across his face.
“It’s not Zura, it’s Katsura. - Ah. Could I come in?”
Kintoki -
I found this wig! I think it belongs to you?
It’s seen better days, so please take good care of it! Hahaha!
- Sakamoto
P.S. Oh, he still loves you too, by the way.
Fandom: Gintama
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: Gintoki/Katsura, but the main characters are Sakamoto and Katsura.
Disclaimer: Gintama is as much mine as a well-adjusted sleep schedule. Morning!
Feedback: A high five, a slap in the face, hit me with it.
Notes: Inspired by and written to "Quelqu'un Ma Dit" - Carla Bruni. Translated lyrics here.
Cross-posted at ginzura & gintama.
They’re going to drink too much, and speak of things he doesn’t want to, and his sandals are going to get vomited on. He knows all of this in vivid detail the moment the damn afro is let in. Katsura’s followers are traitors, every single one of them, to deliver him into the hands of such an idiot drunk.
“Zura, Zura, you need to loosen up!” is the declaration of the evening, and the rebel tries not to notice the way his men smile gratefully at Sakamoto, and shake his hand a little too warmly. Refusing the invitation on those grounds alone is impossible.
It’s really just unforgivable.
They’ve had too much to drink. It’s fortunate when the waitress, no longer deeming Sakamoto’s ample wallet worth the aggravation, strides off after a resounding slap.
“Can’t you behave yourself?” murmurs Katsura, sinking into his cup of sake. “She is likely someone’s wife.”
The younger man laughs, rubbing his cheek. “I know that’s your thing, Zura - ”
“Katsura.”
“ - but I’m not into that! Married, unmarried, who cares, huh? A man can’t help being in love. He just knows!”
“Aa?” drawls the rebel dryly. “So, ‘are you still serving dumplings, no, can I see yours then?’ is what one says to their beloved?”
Sakamoto grins, waving a hand. “Ahaha! It’s an ice-breaker, an ice-breaker! You gotta save the good stuff for later on.”
Katsura gives a dismissive snort, reaching for the bottle. The merchant’s grin wattage reduces to a smile, and he ruffles Katsura’s hair too roughly. Sake spills onto the smooth wood of the bar. “You shouldn’t frown so much. You could get wrinkles. And women only tolerate wrinkles on their husband’s - ”
“Tatsuma.”
“ - I was going to say their husband’s father! Ahaha, you don’t have much faith in me.”
“Why should I, hn?”
“Because I’m buying the next round! Ahaha!”
“I just think,” mumbles Zura, aware that he is far, far too drunk now, “I just think you could do it better. I wish you could stay and help me do it better - ”
“I can’t stay,” smiles the other man, and those ridiculous sunglasses are off now, lying in the splashes of sake on the bar top. Tatsuma was always the most youthful in age and spirit, the prized youngest child of a long-disbanded family of brothers. Now, Katsura can see, deep blue eyes have matured far beyond that adolescent station. “You know my cause is up there now.”
“I know. …I’m sorry. I’ve had too much.”
“Even if there’s too much, you’re not on your own down here, aa?”
“He doesn’t want to help. He doesn’t want anything to do with - ” an awkward, too-obvious pause, “ - the cause.”
“I didn’t say anything about help.” Sakamoto picks up his glasses, tucks them in his scarf. The hand falls back onto the rebel’s shoulder. “I just said you weren’t alone.”
Katsura can’t quite manage a smile, but fills his comrade’s cup (as Sakamoto overflows those of everyone around him).
“He still loves you, you know,” the taller man slurs into his ear, alcohol-heavy and warm in the October chill.
Katsura’s heart is suddenly in his throat, so he can’t seem to swallow the thick, clumsy word. “Why?”
“Aaah,” sighs Sakamoto, “Zura, Zura, a man can’t help being in love. He just knows.”
He then throws up onto Katsura’s sandals.
It’s really just unforgivable.
Sleeping beside Sakamoto is surprisingly calming. He doesn’t snore, doesn’t elbow or kick, and he doesn’t curl up behind Katsura like a second skin, breathing sugar-sweet breath into the crook of his neck.
He just sleeps.
Even so, Katsura doesn’t.
The morning is bright and brittle. Sakamoto jostles him awake, and Katsura startles like an animal, reaching automatically for the sheath beside his pillow. The action feels too telling and he’s, for just a moment, deeply ashamed, but the other man only laughs more. “Ahaha, whoah whoah, I didn’t do anything weird! I remembered in time, Zura, relax.”
“Katsura,” he grunts groggily. “Wait, what?”
He ends up using the sword anyway.
Katsura knows Sakamoto saw his new scars. As far as the rebel could tell, Sakamoto doesn’t have any new ones.
He’d like to think that means space is far less dangerous than he’s heard about.
He knows it’s because Sakamoto is far more dangerous than space has heard about.
“Ahaha, wow, it’s so lively!” the merchant chirps, trekking down the crowded main street alongside him. His strides are longer than Katsura’s, but slower, too. Sakamoto always enjoys the journey, and this one is no exception. “It’s just like how I remembered it! - Except for you, hahaha, I would have remembered you, marry me? No? How about just a honeymoon, then?”
Katsura tunes out the other’s rejection, casting a critical eye up from beneath his hat. He feels his jaw tighten, the hilt of his katana boring into his palm. “How can this be how you remembered Edo?” he spits, sharp enough to send the uninterested girl on her way.
Everything Katsura sees is tainted with foreign influence. He crosses streets with Amanto who may have killed tens of his comrades with their own hands, hundreds of his countrymen with their hands on advanced tech.
The same breed of tech they are now selling to widows and fatherless children, as if to fill that void left behind. His voice is laced with regret. “This isn’t Edo as it was.”
Sunglasses and smile impassive, the taller man informs him, “Really? It smells like it,” and guides them to a food stall. “Hey, no matter how much ginger you put on gyoza, it’s still gyoza, right?”
“I don’t like ginger,” he responds flatly. Sakamoto snorts, clapping a wide palm onto the top of Katsura’s head.
“Sure, but don’t let that stop you from enjoying the smell of fresh gyoza, huh? Ahaha, good afternoon! Four please!”
They go past the snack shop Gintoki’s been staying at without breaking stride. Katsura doesn’t look at Sakamoto or the shop front. He watches his feet, taking even steps, one in front of the other.
One, two.
One, two.
One, two.
It looks so easy.
When they rest in the park, the taller man unfurls like a bloom in the sun. His skin’s gotten paler, up on the ship - he used to be tannest of them all. Sakamoto was brown as a nut all summer and winter, like he’d absorbed the beams themselves and held onto them.
His own skin has always been pale. In the war, bruises showed up on it every day, like carefree splotches of water paint. They were haphazard and colourful, sometimes even playful, especially when left from smirking teeth or sucking lips, and stroked with a tongue as deft as a paintbrush.
Things have changed, even their bodies say. Sakamoto’s skin looks light as a newborn star, and Katsura’s is starving to death for colour.
Sakamoto goes out again once they return, rambling about a ship engine mechanic he hasn’t seen in awhile and stealing Katsura’s gloves. The rebel elects to stay in and do laundry. Although he receives an inscrutable look, he isn’t argued with, and soon the creaky front door slides shut behind his old comrade.
Katsura brings the basket of damp clothes outside, steps up on a rock that has been worn down by someone else’s sandals to reach the wash line. With methodical, fluid movements, the contents of the basket are transferred; an old, soggy yukata, a kimono with dark sauce still vaguely staining the collar, a white towel with eyes and a yellow beak.
Wind ripples along the row once he’s finished his task, and he watches the muted colours sway heavily. It’ll be a long while before they’re dried in the weakness of this light - all there is to do is wait.
Vaguely, he knows it’s a dream. Even though everything is the same - the clothes line, the worn stone, the faded light of the autumn sky - he knows it’s a dream. He knows he finished this chore and sat down on the porch, so he shouldn’t still be attending to it, putting up kimono after kimono. The basket doesn’t seem to end for a long time, and when it finally does, his hand plunges into water.
“ - Ah?”
As he leans over to peer in the basket, drops splash onto the smooth surface of the deep puddle inside. Stupidly, he looks up for rain, but there isn’t any - the drops came from his hair. It dawns on him then that he’s become completely soaked.
With a logic that seems undeniable, Katsura steps back onto the stone. He then reaches up to the top of the wooden post, and hauls himself up onto the laundry line.
“You won’t get dry like that, stupid,” comes a low, indolent drawl. “Oi, come down. Your wig’ll fly away.”
“Shut up,” says Katsura. His hands tighten on his washing line perch. “I have to wait.”
“No you don’t.” The man beneath him slides a hand beneath his kimono, up his shin. Katsura wobbles dangerously, disturbing all the clothes on the cord, but he can’t move away. He can fall backwards or forwards, and that tone is becoming more inviting.
Although he sees the other below him, the words somehow come hot and rich against his ear. “Come on, Zura. Come down here. I’ll warm you up - ”
“Shit,” Katsura blurts, as his head skids off the wooden support beam of the porch. “Shit,” he adds eloquently, his neck letting him know of the awkward position he’d dozed off in. He feels sick. He feels like he has vertigo.
“ - Ahaha, there you are!” He almost winces. Sakamoto seems so loud after the simple stillness of that late afternoon (after the low murmurs in the back of his mind). The sun’s petered out almost completely by now, dusk rolling in like a cool stranger. “I got you a doggy bag from Wataru!”
“Ah… thank you. Where is it?”
“At Wataru! Ahaha, sorry. The imported beer got the best of me, Zura.”
“Katsura.” He doesn’t feel alert enough to speak with Sakamoto yet, worries the perceptive eyes of the younger man will see traces of a white kimono, hanging in the air beside the laundry. He looks away from the spot in question, kneading his sore neck. “How was…” He’s forgotten his name. “…Your friend?”
A cloud of alcohol hits him as Sakamoto sits down. His foggy mind supplies the imagery of a distillery inside that enormous, ridiculous afro. “Aaah, just great! He’s getting married, though, so he wasn’t much for girl hunting. Don’t you think it should be the opposite way?”
“What?”
“You know - a lot of girls to give him the proper ‘send off,’ ahaha!”
“No. That’s not how it works at all, you idiot.” Katsura pushes his hair back, almost expecting his fingers to come away damp. “If he has one… he should be with his one and only.”
There’s a small moment of silence, and then Sakamoto’s arm fwumps onto his shoulders, yanking him into a one-armed hug. “Haha, is that how it is?” The other man’s voice is fond, reassuring, and Katsura feels his stomach unclench, just a little. “You’d never expect a guy with a face like yours to be such a softie, ahahaha.”
“It’s not softie, it’s Katsura.” The taller man only chuckles more, and they watch the last of the sun filter down below the cheap garden fence quietly. When the rebel shifts to warm his hands within his sleeves, Sakamoto tilts his head.
“Hmmm? Are you cold? Looks like we should warm you up.”
Katsura’s eyes widen and then close, mouth drawing tight as he nods. “…Aa.”
“Oh, uh, well, it appears that your gloves are at Wataru too… ahaha, sorry?”
The relieved exhale wavers painfully, but there’s just enough laughter in it to keep him from attempting to climb up alongside a soggy yukuta. “Let’s just go inside.”
Sakamoto lies on the futon belly-down, fiddling with a strange little device. “What is it?” Katsura asks haltingly, snuffing out the room’s candles.
“This? It’s - sort of multi-purpose.” He turns the matte metallic object around, showing Katsura a screen. It’s lit up, and colourful. “See, I can get in contact with my assistant if I press this, and check the progress of my clients’ orders if I press this, and find out where the best hostess bars in the galaxy are if I enable this, and then go here!” He beams. “Oh, and right now I’m setting the alarm clock! Mutsu’ll have my balls if I’m late, ahah… ha…”
“You’re leaving already?” asks the rebel, and he immediately wishes he could retract the statement, say something more neutral, less obvious.
Of course, the taller man just grins. “Ahaha, gonna miss me, Zura?”
“Katsura. Tch, who would? Do this world a favour and fall out of an airlock.”
“Ahaha! So cold, so cold! It’s a good thing I know you don’t mean that, or my feelings would be hurt!”
“A talking afro doesn’t have feelings,” mumbles Katsura, suddenly feeling exhausted. He flops down onto the futon beside Sakamoto rather gracelessly, hair settling around his face like a mourning shroud.
Impertinent as always, the blue-eyed man lifts a forelock, peering at him with a too-knowing smile. “What’s with this gloomy atmosphere of yours, huh? You’ll make me feel guilty.”
Katsura squints his eye shut to the other’s scrutiny. He knows he’s being stupid. He doesn’t care. “A talking afro doesn’t have feelings,” he repeats gruffly.
“You could come with me,” comes the other’s smooth voice, stark and sincere.
“No, I couldn’t,” he responds thickly. His shoulders hunch tighter, as if he’s re-positioning himself under the weight of that burden he took up all too quickly. He knows he won’t be rid of it. He may lose everything else, everyone else, but he won’t ever be able to put that duty aside. “You know I couldn’t.”
Sakamoto shifts, suddenly pulling him to his chest. A wide, square hand strokes down the rebel’s spine, slow and firm. It’s shameful, completely lacking in dignity, but Katsura thaws to it, and presses his face to the other man’s throat. “I know you couldn’t,” affirms Sakamoto quietly, almost wryly.
Katsura isn’t prepared for it when he adds, “Ahah, he’d never forgive me.”
He wakes jarringly to the other’s alarm and finds himself tangled up with Sakamoto like a littermate (like dogs of war at rest). Despite the acute prickling of his own awkward skin, he doesn’t pull away. It’s warm and …peaceful, like this. It reminds him of the war in a way that doesn’t make loss and weariness ache in his gut. It reminds him of having a family.
Aside from the stupid, noisy alarm.
“Tatsuma,” he whispers, once he’s had enough of it. Out of practice, his hand shifts tentatively up, ruffles the other’s ridiculous hair. “Tatsuma, you’re going to be late.” When he receives no response, the gentle fingers turn rough, yanking at the brown tufts unforgivingly. “Wake up, asshole.”
“M’up, m’up,” hums Sakamoto. He slaps around over their heads for his device, shutting off the trilling alarm. He then picks it up and surveys the screen, pressing various buttons as he scratches a very private area below the sheets. Katsura resolves to do laundry again as soon as possible.
“Hahaha, oops,” the businessman says.
“ - Oops?” repeats Katsura uncertainly.
“Oops, haha!” The taller man disengages with a lanky stretch, and Katsura is pleasantly surprised to find his limbs still feel warm and relaxed. “Looks like I forgot a delivery.”
“Oh.” Katsura blinks, not even trying to feign surprise. “Is that a problem?”
“Nah, nah, I’m sure everything will work out for the best, ahaha!”
“Ah, well, your assistant - ”
“ - Just sent me a picture of her new steel-toed boots! Wow, how stylish! Those spikes look really long - ahahaha… ahaha… ha… hey, Zura, could you do me a favour?”
After seeing the other man off at the Terminal, and giving an impromptu blessing to a crowd of devotees whom recognized his monks’ robes, he peers down at the scribbled address. On the scrap of paper, Sakamoto’s handwriting is boxy and energetic, like the hands that wrote the words themselves.
As he walks, he turns the nameless envelope over in his other hand, wondering if it’s money to hush up some sort of sexual harassment lawsuit. But when he goes by six different cabaret girls clubs without seeing the address, his fears of an angry floral kimono-clad mob subside.
He then wonders if it’s a check to that mechanic friend of his, if maybe that meeting had been just as much business as pleasure. Sakamoto hasn’t been shy as an investor of new businesses, especially not those who could scratch his back in return later on. But he goes through the merchant’s district, too, without finding his match, and sets that theory aside as well.
Fleetingly, he wonders if it’s a love letter. He then chides himself - Sakamoto didn’t think with his heart, he thought with his pants, and what was in his pants had no business writing letters.
When he finally finds his way to the marked address, his stomach drops into his sandals. It’s not as much as a figure of speech as he might have thought it’d be - it literally feels as if every step he takes towards the door is squashing his innards together.
But he has a - duty. Sakamoto has given him a duty, and if he doesn’t have his duty, he has (is) nothing. He has to move forward. He has to follow this through.
One, two.
One, two.
One, two.
He knocks with a hand that fights trembling, and the door slides open.
“Zura?” Gintoki startles, clear surprise written across his face.
“It’s not Zura, it’s Katsura. - Ah. Could I come in?”
Kintoki -
I found this wig! I think it belongs to you?
It’s seen better days, so please take good care of it! Hahaha!
- Sakamoto
P.S. Oh, he still loves you too, by the way.