Author's Note: Written for gryvon for the yaoi challenge community on LJ several months ago, couldn't post until now. Beta-ed by gelfling8604.

The way Sano saw things was this: Saitou owed him dinner.

Saitou, of course, wasn't buying, either the explanation or the dinner, no matter how Sano tried to explain it to him. This may very well have been because he had shown up at the Kamiya Dojo looking for Kenshin, who wasn't there, and therefore the cop was in an even worse mood than usual. Or maybe not; it wasn't like Saitou was very good-natured on a good day, either. "Let me see if I have this straight: I should buy you dinner because you thought I was dead."

Sano was doing his best to be patient, but it was a forever losing battle. He hadn't been born with much patience to begin with, and what little he had was quickly used up just watching the way the cop lit his cigarette and brought it to his lips. The guy smoked like one of those goddamned Western trains, so how the hell he managed to keep his teeth and gloves white was completely beyond Sano. It was like Saitou had been issued a license that said he was too cool to deal with things like stained gloves. It was a license Sano didn't have and wasn't likely to get anytime soon, so he felt justified in his resentment of Saitou owning one. Felt justified in his resentment of the cop's (somewhat lackluster) attempt to act like he didn't get it, too. Guy disappeared for months after the whole Shishio thing and then showed up like nothing had ever happened and he thought- "You owe me dinner because you made me think you were dead, jackass."

Saitou ignored the insult, just quirked one eyebrow and blew out a stream of smoke. More stuff for Sano to resent him for. While Sano could grant that the lack of coughing on the cop's part was probably from long experience with smoking, the raising the eyebrow thing was just unfair. "I didn't make you think anything, idiot. You just made an assumption. As usual. And I still don't see how this leads to me buying you dinner."

Sano had a perfectly good line of reasoning that led to Saitou buying him dinner. The only problem was it was a little embarrassing. "Uh…"

The cop stared at him for a moment, waiting, before exhaling some smoke out his nose with a derisive snort and tapping some of the ash on the end of his cigarette onto the ground. "Excellent argument you have there, fool. And if that's all you want to bother me about, I have better things to do than listen to you whine." Saitou turned away and started walking down the pathway to the dojo's entrance, pausing only briefly to throw over one shoulder, "Be sure to send Himura my way when he gets back."

"Like hell I'm going to be your messenger boy," Sano shot back heatedly. "You can come get him yourse-" It would have been a decent retort, if Saitou hadn't blatantly ignored him and kept on walking, making his way around the corner before Sano even managed to build up some momentum. "Hey! Hey, you asshole, you can't just walk away when I'm talking to- hey!"

----

How Saitou had managed to score such a big office was completely beyond Sano. Shit, the former Shinsengumi may have been secret police, and for all Sano knew that came with a big paycheck (though he sort of doubted it; everyone knew government jobs paid for shit unless you were corrupt slime, and for all of Saitou's numerous faults, Sano could grudgingly admit being corrupt slime wasn't one of them), but still, the office was fucking huge. "Nice place."

Seated behind his desk with his customary lit cigarette in hand, Saitou stared at him blankly as the smoke rose to curl around the ceiling. "Please tell me who thought it was a good idea to let a thug like you into Tokyo's main police station without supervision so I can fire him."

Sano snorted and put his hands behind his head. "Chou."

At that, Saitou sighed and ground his cigarette into the nearby ashtray. "Figures. What do you want?"

"You don't need to be rude. You're the one who wanted me tell you when Kenshin got back."

Saitou put his elbows on his desk, steepled his fingers and smirked, his teeth gleaming in the harsh lights. One day, Sano vowed, he would figure out how in hell Saitou managed to keep them so fucking white. "I recall telling you to send Himura to me after he returned from his trip, not to come tell me when he returned. I also recall you saying no, but then, one can't expect trash like you to hold true to your word, I suppose."

Sano gritted his teeth and ignored the insult with an effort. It was also something of an effort not to start at the realization that Saitou actually had been paying attention to him during the end of their encounter three days ago, but from long experience Sano knew trying to draw Saitou out on something like that was a lost cause from the start. "I did tell Kenshin you wanted to see him. He told me to come tell you to meet him at Kaoru's dojo."

Saitou raised an eyebrow. "I suppose you were telling the truth then when you told me that you weren't my messenger boy. You whore out your services indiscriminately."

Alright, one insult Sano was willing to let slide, but two was really fucking pushing it. Sano clenched his hands- ignoring the twinge in his right- and took a step towards the cop's desk, but Saitou had apparently dismissed the conversation, the older man getting to his feet and moving around the desk to bypass Sano entirely. "If Himura wants to meet me on his own territory, I have no problem with that."

Sano didn't turn to face Saitou, though he did say, "Grave offerings are really fucking expensive."

Though his back was to the cop, Sano could still tell the moment Saitou turned to look at him over one shoulder with his customary frown. "What?"

Sano shook his head. Who the hell was he fooling? Wasn't like Saitou would care. "Nothing."

There was a momentary pause, then an uncharacteristically quiet, "When I return I expect to find everything as I left it, understand?"

The former Shinsengumi didn't even bother sticking around for Sano's reply, just left as soon as he'd said his piece.

Sano was actually briefly tempted to steal something just to get under Saitou's skin, but quickly suppressed the urge. He'd been working to get Saitou's respect ever since they'd met, and though he hadn't done so hot, he knew that things were still better than they had been before… everything. Snatching one of Saitou's possessions wasn't likely to improve their relationship at all, and besides that… Sano was many things, but a thief wasn't one of them. He exited the office less than a minute after Saitou did, and went looking for the nearest bar.

----

It was difficult getting uproariously drunk with no money to speak of, but by calling up a few favors with some friends who did have money and using the last of his credit in the one bar left who let him have a tab, Sano managed to find himself pleasantly buzzed and with half a bottle of (very bad, but who cared) sake still in hand by the time evening came around.

He didn't particularly feel like heading back to his shack as the landowner had been making noise about the rent again, and considering how he had insulted Kaoru's cooking at breakfast he doubted he would be welcome near the dojo for a day or two, so in the end Sano found himself sitting on the bank of the river that ran through Tokyo, watching the water amble on by as the sun went down. The sake was still crap and for some reason his head was telling him he was both more than slightly drunk and less than slightly hung over at the same time.

The fact that Saitou had been standing beside him for the last five minutes didn't really improve matters much.

Sano didn't really want to talk with the cop just then. He didn't really want to talk with the cop ever, because until two weeks ago he had thought the man was dead and he was still pissed about it, and it just pissed him off more that Saitou acted like there was no reason for anyone to be concerned in the slightest about whether he was alive or not. Jackass.

Still, Saitou wasn't saying anything and didn't seem like he was about to, so probably the only way to make him leave was to start the conversation off. "You just gonna stand there all night?"

Saitou shrugged. For once the cigarette was absent. "Unlikely. Watching you drink low-quality sake isn't my idea of what constitutes good entertainment."

Sano didn't know what half of those words meant, but even drunk he wasn't so stupid as to not be able to get the gist from the context. "So why ya here?"

The cop shrugged again. "I finished with Himura."

Sano laughed. It came out a weird mix of the usual drunk giggle and more than a little bitterness. "Didn't take you long to guilt Kenshin into risking his life again for the fucking Meiji this time?"

Saitou snorted. "Please. Makoto Shishio was an isolated incident. I just wanted to ask your Battousai whether he had some information on an old comrade of his from the Revolution who has recently been spending his time murdering the families of disposed samurai."

Sano winced, despite himself. Going after your old enemies was one thing, but bringing their families into it was just low. "Did he?"

"Hasn't heard from the man since the war ended."

"Too bad." And Sano meant it. He didn't really like Saitou much, but the guy was awfully good at what he did. No way he would let a sleazebag who killed women and children off without giving the bastard what he deserved.

There was a bit where they didn't talk for a while, where Sano finished off the last of his sake and Saitou went on not smoking, but then the sake was gone and Saitou was still there and so Sano had to ask, "You know, finishing with Kenshin isn't really a reason to come find me."

"Grave offerings aren't a topic that I'd think you would be interested in."

Sometimes Sano wondered if Saitou was actually capable of missing anything, no matter how much the cop pretended to ignore people. "Yeah… well." He tried to come up with something else to say. "Well." That was about as far as he got.

"I didn't have a grave."

Sano shrugged and lay down on the grass with his hands acting as a cushion behind his head. "The burnt out husk of Shishio's castle made a pretty good memorial, I thought."

The idea of talking about this with Saitou three days ago had seemed… humiliating. Like he was admitting to something best left unsaid. It was the sake, Sano knew, that made it seem less so now, but at least he was sober enough not to expect much of a reaction from Saitou. The cop was about as sentimental as a post, even when it came to something like his supposed demise. But Sano sort of wanted to talk about it anyway. "You could have told someone you were okay. Or sent a note or something. I mean, I know you don't really give a shit about what I think, but Kenshin was kind of bummed out about it, too. He doesn't like you, but you're… the only one left from then. I think he kind of likes the idea of knowing someone who went through the same war he did, even if you guys wouldn't talk about it in a million years."

He didn't like Saitou anymore than Kenshin did. And even if Saitou was as strong as Kenshin, even if he was just as awesome a fighter, Kenshin was so much better a person that there wasn't even a comparison. But even though Sano had long considered Kenshin to be unbeatable, he had thought Saitou to be unkillable. He always expected Kenshin to win, but from the first time Sano had come up against Saitou, he had thought Saitou was immortal in a way Kenshin never could be. Kenshin was too good to last forever. He was… what was the word Megumi had used once? Temporal. Saitou, on the other hand… the guy was like a fucking cockroach.

When Saitou had died… that had shaken Sano to the core. Shaken as he hadn't been since he had fought Kenshin back when they first met, and not nearly in as good a way.

But Saitou hadn't died. Which made Sano want to break things. He could have… all it would have taken was a fucking note. "I threw incense and candles and some of those dried flowers into the smoldering pit where I thought you had died. Thought it would increase your chances of making it into heaven, since there was no way in hell you would ever make it there on your own. Wasted all that money on you. Stupid of me. Really stupid. Could've bought food."

Saitou had remained quiet through Sano's rambling, but apparently Sano's last words presented too much of an opening for him to resist. "You would have spent it on more alcohol."

Sano laughed and closed his eyes. "Yeah. Maybe."

Sano distantly heard Saitou turn around and make his way up the river bank, his shoes scuffing on the grass, but he didn't bother opening his eyes to watch the cop go, which was why it took him a few seconds to respond when Saitou stopped halfway up and said, "Well?"

Sano blinked and propped himself up onto his elbows, craning his neck to look at Saitou, who was now staring at him, the older man's eyes narrowed in annoyance. "Well what?"

"If you want me to buy you dinner, you'll have to actually get up, moron."

Dinner? Shit, Saitou may have been as good as fucking psychic, but he couldn't honestly expect everyone else to be as well. Didn't need to be a prick about Sano not catching on fast enough. Still… Sano hadn't eaten since breakfast, and most of that he hadn't been able to get down (eating Kaoru's rice balls was practically an exercise in stamina itself). Dinner sounded… okay.

Saitou didn't apologize. Ever. Partly because he was one of those people who was rarely wrong, but also because he was the sort of guy who didn't linger on the few mistakes he made. But maybe… nah.

Still, Sano was never so stupid as to turn down free food. He pushed himself to his feet, wobbling only slightly from the lingering effects of the sake in his system, before turning to give Saitou a grin. "I know this great sushi place…"

Saitou didn't return the grin, just started walking away. As Sano moved to follow, he found that he didn't particularly care.

END