Title: Cops and Pirates
Series: Gintama (AU)
Pairings: Gintoki x Katsura
Rating: PG-13
A/N: This is the crack of all cracks. It's a Gintama AU! Don't expect it to be good. This is why the mangaka makes buckets of money and I don't. Even so, try not to say anything too mean ^^;;
So this is an AU: Gintoki and Hasegawa are cops. It doesn't really matter what country / time period / universe they're in. Shinpachi calls Gintoki "Gin-san" because how could he not? Elizabeth is a real duck. Kondou-san still knows fuck all what's going on around him.
“Sakata and Hasegawa, ehh?”
The Chief liked to drawl their names out like that, as if they were characters in a Western facing off on a black and white television screen. Sakataaa and Hasegaaaawa. He did that because he thought it made him sound cool, which was something Gintoki could relate to.
Beside him, Hasegawa frowned. “Yes, sir.” Because Hasegawa was always so depressed, he always came off really respectful.
The Chief looped his thumbs through his belt and just smirked across the desk at them, which let Gintoki know that he hadn’t a clue as to why they had been brought to his office.
“That’s the third squad car you two have busted this week!!” Vice-Captain Hijikata finally snapped. Right on cue, Gintoki thought. Next to him, the Chief looked surprised.
“Three cars in one week?” He blinked. “Wow.”
Hijikata twitched. When he was really pissed, the cigarette between his lips seemed to vibrate, smoke puffing out of his flared nostrils. It was vibrating now.
Gintoki pushed his pinky into his ear. “We were involved in a high-speed chase. The perps were in a corvette. If we were allowed to drive corvettes instead of Impalas the car wouldn’t have flipped over when we turned the curb like that.
“THREE TIMES?!” Hijikata screamed.
Gintoki persisted. “But if we’d had a corvette…”
The Chief frowned. “They don’t get very good gas mileage.”
“Yes,” Gintoki allowed, “but women love sports cars.”
“That’s it!” Hijikata cried, cigarette vibrating around each word. “You two are on picket duty!! For the next MONTH!!!
Next to him, Hasegawa sighed.
* * *
“It’s not so bad,” Gintoki said, trying to reassure his partner. “At least we get to meet interesting people.”
They were sitting on a park bench across the street from the court house, enjoying their lunch while watching a crowd of people march back and forth before the steps of the building, shouting and waving their signs at annoyed government employees. It was an Animal Rights group today, yammering on about dead polar bears and global warming. So far no fights had broken out, but this particular group had been known to get a little rowdy, so they were just sort of keeping an eye out.
Hasegawa sighed, “Easy for you to say. None of them will even look twice at me.” He frowned, his face otherwise expressionless behind his dark shades. “Women don’t go for old men with receding hair lines and fading dreams.”
Gintoki bit into his sandwich. “At least you don’t have naturally permed hair. Women hate guys with naturally permed hair.” He licked his fingers carefully. Kagura always used too much jelly, so it soaked through the bread and stained his fingers purple.
His eyes strayed once again to the raven-haired picketer, face twisted into an angry glare, arms pumping the sign he held aloft as he marched. It was a hot day, and Gintoki kept waiting for him to stop and do something about that long hair of his, but he hadn’t yet. He seemed like the type who would gladly suffer in silence, simply for the sake of suffering in silence.
“Why don’t you ask him out?”
“Eh?” Gintoki took another bite of his sandwich.
Hasegawa cleared his throat. “You’ve been looking at that guy since this morning. I mean… you’re into dudes, right?”
Gintoki chewed and swallowed, picked up his little canister of strawberry milk. “What makes you think that?”
Hasegawa started to say something, but then seemed to change his mind.
“What?” Gintoki frowned. The milk was hot.
Hasegawa scratched his head. “Well, I was going to say because I’d never seen you with a girl, but then I thought that might seem rude.” He frowned. “It is, isn’t it. But then you’ve never seen me with a girl either. Hey, it’s nothing to be ashamed of. I mean, everybody knows about the Vice-Captain and… Gin? Are you listening to me?” He waved his hand in front of his partner’s face, but Gintoki only blinked.
The raven-haired picketer was staring back at him.
* * *
“You should just do it, Gin-san,” Shinpachi said that evening. “If he was looking at you, that means he was interested. Besides, you haven’t been on a date in a long time. You have to break your dry spell.”
“It’s because of my hair,” Gintoki countered. “Women don’t like-
“It’s because you pick your nose,” the boy continued. “And you don’t wipe your mouth after you eat or drink so you always have a milk mustache. And you have sugar breath, too.”
Gintoki frowned. “I’ve never seen you on a date, either.”
“That’s because I’m only fifteen.” Shinpachi furrowed his brow at his Calculus textbook, glasses slipping down his nose. “Gin-san, can you help me with this problem?”
“Sadaharu went to the bathroom again!” Kagura announced from the kitchen floor.
“Grey’s Anatomy is on,” Gintoki said, tilting his chair back to see if he could see the TV from here. But he couldn’t, so he got up and went to the living room.
* * *
“You should just do it,” Hasegawa said. “Get it over with.” He was sucking on a grape Popsicle, which was rapidly melting in the midsummer heat, purple juices dripping down his fingers, staining his uniform.
Gintoki yawned. “Do what?” Today it was a Pro-Choice group. They chanted vigorously, waving their signs and their fists, not seeming to mind the hot sun bouncing off the equally hot pavement. All women. Except for one man.
“I mean, he’s come back every day,” Hasegawa continued. “That has to mean something.”
“Maybe he’s very passionate about women’s rights,” Gintoki suggested. He leaned back on the city bench, crossing his legs, resting one calf on his knee.
“Oh yeah, sure. Along with animal rights, civil rights, gay rights, and whatever it was they were yammering on about yesterday.”
But Gintoki didn’t respond, because the dark-haired picketer was staring at him again.
Up and down, up and down. The steady movement of the sign made his head spin. And the heat didn’t help.
* * *
“I thought you said we were going to lunch,” his date said. He sat down rather primly on the little marble chair, hands resting in his lap, expression completely blank.
“We are,” Gintoki replied, slouching down into his own seat. He rested a hand on the little round table, his other rubbing his chin absently. “Hmmm. So many flavors. Which one do you want, Zura?”
“I don’t eat ice cream for lunch. And I told you, my name is Katsura.”
Gintoki sort of laughed. “Okay, so that’s two strawberry parfaits…”
Katsura sighed. “I will have a banana split, please.” His eyes scanned the menu on the wall, behind the long line of people. “With nuts.”
“Are you sure you don’t want a parfait?” Gintoki stood up. “A banana parfait?”
“No.”
“All right.” He scratched his head. “Ahh, do you have any change? I think I left my wallet with my partner.”
Katsura’s face was as blank as ever. “Why does your partner have your wallet?”
“Well, he lost his own wallet, so I loaned him mine to help him feel better about himself.” Gintoki scratched the back of his head again. “A man without his wallet is like… like a school girl without her training bra. When she goes home, she feels like less of a woman and gets scolded by her mother as soon as she walks in the door.”
Katsura stared at him for a moment, then reached into his pocket, pulling out his wallet. “I’ll have a banana parfait,” he said, handing his credit card to Gintoki. “With nuts.”
* * *
That evening Gintoki almost tripped over a duck.
“Zura!” he said, stumbling out of the bathroom. “Why do you have a duck in your bathroom?”
“Not Zura,” his date snapped from the living room. “Katsura!”
Gintoki crouched down and held out his fingers. “Here, little Ducky. Quack, quack.” But the duck just sat there, gazing at him with almost alien intelligence.
“It’s name is Elizabeth,” Katsura said, suddenly behind him.
Gintoki straightened. “We have Sadaharu,” he said.
Katsura frowned. “What’s-
But Gintoki didn’t feel like explaining why he had pomeranian-shaped dog the size of a standard poodle, so he just grabbed Katsura and kissed him.
* * *
They were talking about pirates when Katsura suddenly shifted and said, “I don’t usually do this on the first date.”
Gintoki scratched his bare chest. “If we do it on the second date, it’ll cancel it out.”
Katsura frowned and shifted again, accidentally getting hair in Gintoki’s mouth. “Don’t you mean if we don’t do it?”
“If we do it differently, it'll still count.” He pushed the moist, dark strands aside and started to pick his nose, but then remembered what Shinpachi had said the night before and thought better of it.
“Differently?” Katsura frowned again, seeming to realize something. This time Gintoki could feel the expression against his skin. “I don’t remember agreeing to a second date.”
“You did.” He turned his head, yawning into the top of Katsura’s head. Katsura’s hair smelled like lavender. “You just don’t remember. It was during sex.”
“That doesn’t count!” He felt him frowning again.
“Yes, it does.” He scratched his chest, smiling lazily. “Want to do it again? If we do it again, it’ll cancel it out.”
“I told you; it doesn’t work like that!”
Gintoki persisted. “Come on, Zura. We can play pirates this time. You can be Captain Zura.”
Katsura lifted his head, expression furious. “It’s not Zura!!” He sat up quickly, gracefully, then shifted to straddle Gintoki, palms planted on his chest, nails digging lightly into his skin, Gintoki’s hands moving automatically to slide up his thighs and over his hips. “It’s Captain Katsura!”
Gintoki just smiled his lazy smile.
THE END