a/n: This oneshot takes place about five years after Utsurou is defeated - so, it's post-canon. Everybody is semi-OOC but I'm trying to express a type of dynamic that I don't see often, so please forgive me.
=x=
For once, Takasugi Shinsuke stays in a small hotel across the street from Otose's Snack Bar. The city of Edo does nothing for him at this point of his life, but sometimes the sweet silence of the countryside dulls him into apathy. So sometimes he will stay in Edo like a cat, leaving without a trace.
He wonders what he is looking for, but in the morning, fresh and crisp like an apple, he finds his answer. In the early dawn, there is his old friend, his blood brother, his soul mate who opens the door to their loft on the second floor and kisses his golden-haired wife to wish her a good day while she escorts their children to school and something in his heart breaks, sweetly and slowly.
Ah, so Katsura didn't lie to him.
After his friend retreats and closes the door, Takasugi turns his head away from the window, refills the tobacco in his pipe and strikes a match once more. The white smoke fills up his hotel room and then the black beast inside of him roars in abject despair.
His shamisen rests in the corner of his room while he writes his poems. That's all he wants to do these days; he doesn't want to touch another sword unless absolutely necessary. He wets his brush with ink; ready to write. But there are no words big enough to express how he feels. If losing Shoyou felt like his heart was ripped out, then knowing Gintoki has forgotten him is like his limbs torn one by one. And he can never hate Gintoki enough for how this man - this beautiful, force of nature who has saved the world more than once - has changed his life ever since that day at the shrine.
How many years has it been since they met? Fifteen? Twenty? They are older now; even the crinkles are starting to show in the corners of Takasugi's eyes. He never gave a damn about his looks as it never saved lives; it never gave him what he wanted anyways. Should he even be surprised that the Shiroyasha has a family to call his own?
The world changes too quickly and Takasugi always feels like he is one step behind.
-x-
"It's been a while, hasn't it?" Gintoki asks as he steps lightly in a room of Shinpachi's dojo. He still is fit and trim, with an energy that doesn't befit his age.
"Yeah."
"How's that eye of yours?"
"It's doing fine, Gintoki." They raise their wooden swords and charge. The anger of who they were ten years ago has faded and Shinsuke has forgiven Gintoki for sparing his life in exchange for Shoyou's.
This is how they communicate - in fights, in wooden strokes and the clanging of two sticks, temporarily touching against each other. Once upon a time as young boys it was to establish dominance against the other. As teenagers they fought against the Amanto, trying to save their sensei against the backdrop of an already failed rebellion against the government. The finale of their dysfunctional relationship with the two of them almost killing each other after a decade of silence. Takasugi couldn't forgive him for that utter betrayal for years.
And now as old men, there comes absolution.
"Checkmate," Gintoki says, after delivering a blow that fells his opponent in one successive swoop. Takasugi takes off his headgear, and smiles. "You haven't changed a bit... "
"My wife makes me exercise," he replies, grinning. "She won't have me sitting on my ass all day like I used to, even if I take care of the kids."
His wife. Suddenly a hot jealousy rises in his chest, and Takasugi looks away. "I don't think I've ever met her."
"You don't visit Edo, that's why." And Gintoki's eyes are soft. "But I don't blame you."
-x-
Takasugi decides he likes her when when she offers him tobacco after dinner. Gintoki is in the back of the house tucking the kids in for the night. "I broke tha' habit when I was giving birth to the twins, but somehow I got back into it again..."
"I understand. Even when I'm in the countryside, it's my one vice."
She laughs, her voice slightly raspy. "I try not to do it in front of the kids."
He can't help but to appreciate her company as they smoke in silence. The Sakatas are a perfect picture of domestic bliss; and this strange woman with her husky Yoshiwaran accent somehow suits Gintoki perfectly, as if she was made for him. Still, the slow thrum of envy runs through his blood. I should be the one next to him.
You've had him for the first half of his life, some part of his head reminds him. Now he's chosen to be with her. Takasugi knows he's been a fool; it wasn't Gintoki who purposely avoided him for ten years. It wasn't Gintoki who chose to be alone all his life. It wasn't Gintoki who couldn't bear the burden of living even though he was the one who sliced Shoyou's off so cleanly that you could barely see any blood spraying from his sword.
No. In the end, it's Takasugi Shinsuke who is weaker than all four of them.
"Katsura-san says your poetry is very good. I'm not educated enough ta read those things, unfortunately, but Gintoki keeps a copy of your anthology on the shelf over there."
"Is that so? I'm flattered."
She smiles, turning away her head to blow out smoke. "He misses you, I think."
"There's no reason for him to miss me," he replies, though his heart warms considerably at the news. He decides to ask her a question. "Was it you or him who named your boy Yoshida?"
"That was him," she said, smiling. "I named the girl, myself."
-x-
"Does she know?" Takasugi asks as the two are sitting, perched on the rails of the balcony overlooking the Kabuki-chou district. She's left for her midnight shift of work. And Gintoki knows instantly what he is talking about.
"She knows he's dead, and that's good enough for me."
There's a sense of palpable relief in Takasugi. Finally, there's something that he can claim over her.
"Why did you come to Edo?" Gintoki finally asks. "You always leave. Right after Shouyou, right after Utsurou - "
There's a flicker of resentment that Takasugi hadn't expected.
"We used to be best friends, didn't we?" Gintoki's voice is shaky. "What happened?"
Of course they know what happened. There's a heavy history that can't be breached nor erased. And now... Takasugi hates to admit it, but the Yorozuya once seemed an unfathomable bridge to cross over. Gintoki's family has replaced that now.
It's just more comfortable for them to pretend that they are not in love with each other, as if the ravages of time can simply erase what they've been through together. Takasugi has tried to forget him. He really has. Even the most breathtaking waterfalls and mountains can't stop him from thinking about Gintoki, because who else understands him so perfectly well?
Katsura doesn't get it - he thinks the world is a rosier place than it really is.
But Gintoki does.
"I don't know," Takasugi replies, and for the first time in more than a decade, a tear drops down his cheek.
-x-
"Not here," Gintoki says.
"I have a place across from here."
The white-haired samurai nods, and they carefully cross the street. Not that there is much for anybody else to suspect suspicious wrongdoing. After all, isn't Takasugi Shinsuke a friend and a former comrade of Gintoki's? Is it wrong for them to want to spend more time together?
But once they come to his room, the darkness masks whatever trepidation they both have. The window blinds are shut tight, only the faintest cracks of the moonlight shine through. Takasugi drowns, drowns, drowns in the heat of Gintoki.
It's wrong. On paper it's wrong - Takasugi knows he's made a mockery of the happy family he's just shared a dinner with. But god damn it, Gintoki's mouth feels so good on his, like this is finally absolution - this feels like grace and forgiveness for the last few years after he disappears from Edo.
Later, once they're done and the sweat from their bodies cools, Gintoki asks the question that he hasn't dared to think in years.
"Do you forgive me?"
Takasugi gets up from his futon and slips on his yukata. He isn't ready to answer this question.
Gintoki waits, and then pulls himself up. The other man lights a match for his kiseru, inhaling the smoke.
"It's okay if you don't," Gintoki says.
It takes a while for Takasugi to come up with the words that he won't regret.
"Sensei would have died before us anyways," he finally says. "But... it's not as if it doesn't hurt, even knowing the truth about his real form."
"I'll take that," Gintoki says. There's a wistful sort of smile on his face. "I have to go," he says abruptly.
"Right."
"Kids, and all that."
"Right."
"This is just a one-off thing," he warns Takasugi as he pulls on his boots.
"Right."
And suddenly Takasugi realizes that this will be the last time he'll see Gintoki on his own terms.
-x-
Even in this day and age it still is taboo for a man to love another man. This sort of thing, Takasugi thinks dispassionately, is best reserved to people half their age. Not for men who have happy families or those who have baggage so heavy that even the thought of it would drive a man mad.
He refills his pipe with tobacco and strikes a match against the box.
Once is enough for him.
And in the mid-afternoon, when all four occupants of the apartment above Otose's Snack House are away, he leaves Edo.
He never comes back.