All things out of season.
This one takes place sometime after the Mitsuba Arc (episodes 86-87 in the anime). Spoilers abound for that, of course. Also, the titles for this fic and the taglines I used for each segment are taken from 31 Days.
Ghost in the morning moon.
Gintoki sees him early every morning, spots the top of his head with its messy hair from up in the common room: Hijikata Toushirou, Vice Commander of the Shinsengumi, smoking as always, off on solitary patrol as always. It's not an odd sight, not really – he can't even blame recent events on why he feels this strange pit in his stomach, seeing Hijikata on the police beat, doing the rounds like the workaholic freak he is. Hijikata has apparently never missed out on patrol (or so says Kondo, and rather loudly at that), and it doesn't look like he ever will miss patrol short of someone blowing Edo up to kingdom come and taking everyone within the city with it (or so says Okita, complete with a disdainful sneer). In that case, he'd be dead, and even then, Gintoki has a feeling the swordsman's ghost will still be floating down that route, scaring the shenanigans out of whoever's closest.
As Hijikata rounds the corner and vanishes from sight, Gintoki notes the set of the younger man's shoulders and thinks back to a day much like this one, exactly three months ago: him waking up and stumbling out at random to see Hijikata limping down the street. He's seen all sorts of horrific things (severed heads, limbless bodies, guts and gore, blood everywhere on everything), but he remembers nearly wincing, just a little, at every step Hijikata took on that bad leg, because really, a crutch can only do so much for someone who's been shot just above the ankle. It could have been his imagination, but those eyes, they looked dead for a second. He hadn't thought it possible for eyes that blue to look so lifeless.
Something crashes downstairs – Kagura and Shinpachi must be awake, or maybe Sadaharu's hungry, or maybe Kagura and Shinpachi are awake AND Sadaharu's hungry. Gintoki yawns, stretches, goes back inside.
Strange thoughts. He blames it on the sugar, or lack thereof.
You walk like you're going to fly away.
It irritates him, really. He sees that bastard haunting the corridors of their headquarters, pulling on his coat and puffing that scarf of his up to an impeccable height under his neck, and it irritates him. He moves like a hunting cat that's been caged in for way too long, graceful even despite all that inelegance and all that wasted energy, puffing that cigarette perched between his lips in those same short little breaths that pregnant women take when they're in labor. It irritates him, and Kami-sama knows he'd do something about it except he understands. He fucking understands.
Sometimes, he wishes he didn't.
Okita could tell himself it's been three months since then and three months is plenty, but he'd be lying, because he can still remember the exact weight and chill of his sister's hand on his cheek before it slipped away. If he can remember, and he's better at moving on, then he really shouldn't wonder why it's been three months and Hijikata looks like he's running away from something, always.
Still, it irritates him, irritates him enough to tug the sleeping mask back over his eyes, clap his hand over his ears and roll over, to better ignore the thump-thump-thump of Hijikata's footsteps moving past his room.
Enchantment passing through.
The sneeze is violent enough to rock his head backward, like somebody took a slingshot and used him as the stone. Gintoki snuffles, tries to draw up all the snot in a single draught, wipes his nose with the back of his hand to get rid of the extra gunk. Spring weather and these sudden allergies—
"That's disgusting, danna."
"Didn't your mother ever teach you any manners?"
"She didn't have the time to."
And Okita Sougo is there with him, the young shadow with a sword hovering just at his side. Gintoki's not sure how the kid got there, much less how he managed to come up that close without him noticing. He figures, though, a moment later, that maybe he shouldn't think about it too much.
"Rained out of patrol, huh?"
"No umbrella. I don't want to get sick." Okita glances once in his direction, turns away with a smirk. "I could arrest you for loitering."
"Oi, oi… I could report you to your superiors, y'know. I don't think Mayora's going to be happy about you power tripping."
And he's hit a nerve; it's in the unreadable look, the downward turn of Okita's lips. Gintoki heaved out a sigh, rubbed the back of his neck, watches the empty streets. Sometimes, he feels like he's getting too old for this shit, and that sort of distresses him, because twenty is hardly old, and feeling old will make him old and that's going to give him wrinkles.
"Are you and your vice-captain fighting again?"
"I'll see you tonight."
"Oi, don't just decide things for yourself—"
But Okita's already long gone, pushed himself off the wall and walked right out into the rain without looking back.
Cheeky little brat.
I chose to do wrong in the hope that right might come.
These days, they always go through several rounds of fucking: Okita's aggressive, of course, but Gintoki can deal with aggressive. It's ridiculously easy to push Okita down unto the futon every single time, to pin down those flailing limbs and peel off those clothes and lick/kiss/bite/stroke until Okita finally stops trying to compete with him or demand his attention, allowing him to do as he pleases in order to please them both.
It is in their coming together that Okita looks like someone his age, something vulnerable and breakable even with all the old wounds cutting across the lithely muscled form of his body. Gintoki runs his tongue along those, works his hand on Okita until he's squirming against his body, panting into his ear, bucking right into his palm.
He never warns him when he's coming in; he figures it's not going to change anything. Besides, something tells him that Okita likes it when it hurts.
Somewhat damaged.
If anyone were to ask him about the nature of his relationship with Okita, Gintoki wouldn't really answer straight. He'll say other things instead, like how there's this stray cat he saw once, all dirty and scabby and thin and dying in this alleyway near his home. He's not really fond of animals, but this one was different somehow.
So he took it in. Held on while it scratched at his arms and face, dragged a hard hand down its fur to smooth it out, washed it off, dried it by the stove, left a bowl of food out before bedtime. It left the very same night that he helped it out for the first time, but it comes back every now and then, slinking in through the door, beaten up as usual, vicious, as usual.
Sometimes, it'd let him hold it. Sometimes, it'd purr. But it would always be gone by morning.
It is different this time. He wakes up in the middle of the night to see Okita cross-legged by the window, listening to the rain. He's wearing nothing but the top of his haori, and it's draped over his shoulders almost carelessly, like a blanket too thin to ward off the chill.
"I hope I don't catch your cold."
And it's just like Okita to want to put in the first word. Gintoki stands, picks his pants up from off the floor. He walks over, bringing Okita's clothes with him.
"You will if you stay like that."
He holds Okita's clothes out to him but he might as well be invisible, from the way the boy's looking off somewhere. He knows that look; he's seen it on Katsura, on Takasugi, on Sakamoto, and, more importantly, on the cigarette-smoking idiot that comes down the street every morning, walking like a soldier at war but looking like he died in it only too long ago.
"Ne, danna… you're supposed to do whatever job you're given, right?"
Gintoki should not like where this is going, but he nods anyway. Okita turns, measures him with a look, and then bends upward, to whisper into his ear.
His haori slips from the kid's shoulders, pools unto the floor.
Keep away from my troubles, please.
Most days, he doesn't think about it. Most days, he's occupied with all that crap that comes with living, and that means that he doesn't have the time to think, else someone will be off screwing something up or someone will be plotting to destroy Edo and he won't be around to stop it unless he's right there with his sword at hand and a cig on his lips.
Most days, however, aren't all days, and therein lies the problem.
He didn't really mean to stop. It's weird, really, because he had been fine just minutes earlier, walking along on his usual patrol route. Then he had turned towards the river and something about the way the field by the riverbank had looked made him feel tired. The sort of tired that creeps through every muscle and sinks in deep, straight to the marrow of your bones.
Rolling around in the grass and listening to the river isn't supposed to be something he enjoys, but he's just too damned tired.
"Huh. Slacking off today, Oogushi-kun?"
Now Sataka Gintoki's staring down at him and blocking out the sun and Hijikata wishes that he wasn't so weak.
"Shut up."
Rolling to one's side and huddling up is supposed to be the best way to tell somebody to back the fuck away and leave them alone, but apparently, Gintoki doesn't do innuendo. The silver-haired man cocks an eyebrow at him and moves over, plopping down right beside him. Hijikata's supposed to tell him off for that, but when he turns around to face the man properly he notes the bag he's carrying.
He'd know that label anywhere.
"Oh." And Gintoki – the asshole – he looks surprised. "Want some?"
Hijikata gets up and leaves.
Warm strangers.
"I wonder when you're going to stop getting me to fuck you when you'd rather be somewhere else," he says.
It should have been nice, lying back, sweaty and naked on a futon with another man's cum still cooling on his belly, staring up at the ceiling of a place that wasn't his room, wasn't anywhere in the Shinsengumi headquarters. Gintoki, however, has decided to ruin the moment. Okita didn't think he cared enough to, but he's rapidly learning that the lazy samurai isn't nearly as lazy as he appears to be.
"I thought we were friends, danna."
"…Hearing that from you is scary."
"You haven't done what I asked you to yet."
There are fingers in his hair again, lazily picking out the strands, brushing over his forehead. Idly, Okita wonders if those are the same fingers that were up his ass earlier, spreading him out, making room for something else to come inside.
"Working on it."
Idly, Okita wonders what that other one, the shadow that walks around town in the morning, sees in this guy whose bed he crawls into when he's got nothing better to do. Idly, Okita thinks he knows the reasons, but pretends that he doesn't.
The great bewildering city that you live in.
Hijikata feels most at home in the dingier sections of town, the places where no respectable citizen of Edo will go to unless they didn't have a choice. He likes it here, because there's no one around to stop him from going wild, from cutting up whatever pisses him off because there's a lot that pisses him off recently and this area of town's full of just the sort of crap, living or dead, that won't be missed if he destroys it.
That doesn't mean to say that he goes to that part of town just to bash shit up at random, but thankfully, he's got a valid reason to at the moment. It's important to keep Edo's streets clean, after all.
It's been about two weeks since he first spotted their names on the list that the captain had nailed outside the dojo, marking down special criminals that the government wanted their hired swords to take care of since the regular police force apparently couldn't handle it. He has stalked them since then, hovering just past their peripheral vision, beating them at their own game, making them know that he's after them. That no one's going to help them out once he's come to cut them down.
He's chasing them through alleyways and over rooftops, using anything and everything that he can as leverage to gain just a little more ground, to narrow the distance between them just a little more.
She's probably not going to want to hear it, but it's when he's fighting sons of bitches like these that he feels most alive these days.
Oddly, it's the sudden remembrance of her that makes him just a little careless, careless enough to slip when he's jumping from one rooftop to the next and fall in between, into an alleyway – and oddly, right into someone else's arms.
"Huh. Fancy meeting you here."
One breath and he's staring at a pair of lips he used to think about when he's had too much to smoke or drink, and a pair of eyes that are the kind of red that's not quite like blood, and more like old wine.
Hijikata shrugs out of Gintoki's grip with an angry snarl and dashes off and out of the alleyway; he's lost more than enough time as it is. It's only after he realizes that Gintoki's right at his heels and matching him step for step that he starts to wonder what the hell the man's doing, hanging around the slums.
"Guess you're not out for a walk."
"Idiot. Of course I'm not."
He speeds up at the next corner, eyes not on the ground but on the skyline, where the two criminals are still hopping from roof to roof, trying to get away. The swordsman only slows down after he's just a block ahead of his targets, and tosses his scabbard at the first, bowling the man over and into his companion. He's up in the air in the next moment, jumping up to meet them and take them both out in less than five strokes with the blunt edge of his sword. He thinks he heard Gintoki let out a low, impressed whistle, but he's not so sure. The blood's rushed to his ears.
"Congratulations," Gintoki says, once Hijikata has come back around with his criminals in tow.
"Shut up," Hijikata says, and he drags the men away through the dirt by the scruffs of their necks.
Oddly, in light of being told to be silent, Gintoki does the next worst thing: he follows right along, at his heels.
When in doubt, blame someone else.
They're unwilling traveling companions for the rest of the day – or, unwilling traveling companions on Hijikata's part, at least. Gintoki tags along without a care in the world, watching him bring the guys he beat up to the police station, walking just at his shoulder during patrol, purchasing a strawberry parfait at the joint where Hijikata decided to drop in for a burger. Hijikata attempts to ignore it, but when it's past a respectable hour of the evening and he's sitting at a stall for a rice bowl and Gintoki's still taking the seat next to him, his building annoyance finally gets the better of him.
"Why the hell have you been following me all day?"
"I was hired to do it."
Somehow, that explanation just makes him angrier. Before he can retort, though, Gintoki is holding out a bottle of mayonnaise in his face. Hijikata takes his rage out on the bottle, squirting even more mayonnaise onto his rice than he had planned to.
"I dunno why you guys can't just talk this out with each other. This is hassling for me, you know, getting involved…"
"What are you—"
"That kid of yours is my current customer."
Sunset at the dojo, back in a particular yesterday. A painful smile, a helpless look.
My sister…
She doesn't have much time left.
"Stay out of this and leave me alone."
"Now, now, I can't do that. Backing out on jobs is bad for business."
Hijikata dumps his change on the counter and stalks off; he isn't hungry anymore. Gintoki's back at his heels a second too soon for his tastes, and very suddenly the swordsman finds himself backed up against the wall of an alleyway, glaring up at Gintoki's face. Shrugging the man's hand from his shoulder rewards him with his wrist pinned to place.
"I thought you didn't want to get involved."
"I'm not one to miss out on a good fuck."
And oddly, when Gintoki kisses him, it never occurs to Hijikata to bite the man's mouth off.
Honour is purchas'd by the deeds we do.
Maybe he's been involved since the day Okita called in a favor and dragged him over to meet a nice girl with Okita's hair and Okita's eyes – maybe he was involved with them even before that, from the moment Hijikata tried to kill him, all raw-eyed and raring to carve up a body for the sake of what he cared about. While Gintoki makes it his business to get involved with people and their problems, he nearly regrets stepping into this one. How could anyone, however, resist a stray cat with too many scars to count? How can anyone ignore an idiot that walks like he's dead?
Unsurprisingly, however, Hijikata's very much alive and rather occupied with re-learning how to breathe right at that moment, as Gintoki holds him under and against a futon, hand on his head to press half his body down while the other remains up, warm against Gintoki's palm. The man stopped cursing him just moments ago, the moment Gintoki started stroking him off. Now he traces a path down the back of Hijikata's neck and Hijikata trembles. What a marked change, from the demon vice-captain from the stories.
"So you do have a cute side to you."
"S… shut up."
If that was supposed to sound intimidating, it didn't work. Really: barely dressed guys with their cocks held by the hilt by someone else really shouldn't be so cheeky. Gintoki teases the tip with his thumb, takes a moment out, lazily, to watch Hijikata squirm. He's got the swordsman gritting his teeth and trying not to moan in the moments to follow, as his fingers work at the hardness between Hijikata's legs. When he finally feels the younger man shudder, Gintoki pops two fingers into his mouth.
"Relax."
When he bends over Hijikata to better smell his skin, he takes his moistened fingers and slips them through the taut muscles of the swordsman's ass. Tight and taut and shivering all around him. A fucking virgin.
"S… stop…"
"Do you really want me to?"
Hijikata doesn't answer (at least, not in words and more in shuddering gasps), but Gintoki really doesn't need him to. The silver-haired man flexes his fingers inside the other, making way for himself and then some.
"I'm coming in."
Reaping nothing from this helps everything.
Okita turns up at his window barely minutes after Gintoki's come home and flopped unto his own futon, just before he could actually close his eyes and go to sleep. The swordsman steps in without waiting for an invitation, and kisses him full on the lips. When he draws away, he's smiling.
"You taste like him."
When they fuck, it's like nothing they've ever done before and Gintoki knows exactly why. He heard the reason the moment Okita came around, straight from the younger man's lips. When they're done, he gets up to take a proper shower.
"If it's him you want, you should go and talk to him yourself."
He shuts the door without waiting for an answer. By the time he comes back, Okita's long gone.
One by one the nights will fall.
The next time Gintoki and Hijikata meet, Gintoki walks away with a marred cheek and Hijikata walks away with bloody knuckles. Shinpachi scolds Gintoki when he comes home, because he firmly believes that there aren't a lot of people who can hit his boss around and that could only mean that he meant to get hit, which is just stupid. Gintoki doesn't bother explaining himself.
The next time after that, they're in bed again. Hijikata blames it on the alcohol.
This routine rinses and repeats itself for about a month before Gintoki wakes up one night and finds Hijikata curled up on the far end of his futon. He's on the brink of reaching out to draw the other man over (it's cold tonight) when he sees those shoulders shake, hears a quiet little sob. It's the kind of sound you'd hear from a boy, not a man. It might have been a name, the name of someone they've both met, but it's hard to tell; it could have been anything.
Gintoki lies back down and shuts his eyes. Later on in the morning, as he watches Hijikata dress up and leave, he doesn't say a word.
They don't sleep together at all after that. They don't avoid each other, or try to beat each other up; there's just no more fucking. Just like that.
One point shy of winning.
He doesn't know what happened after that. He still sees Hijikata coming around early in the morning, still comes home to Okita waiting in his room. Any attempt to ask just leads to stilted silence on Hijikata's part, and an oddly subdued Okita in bed the following evening. It's not long before all his asking seems to drive Okita away, even, because soon the swordsman stops showing up altogether.
He had the good fortune of seeing them cross paths once, seeing them walk together, talking business on another date. They look the same as always, seem to act the same as always, but Gintoki is no idiot. He knows the air's different between them. Not better, not worse; just different. But he doubts that anything has been resolved at all.
He knows he should dig a little more but it just makes him feel old. So he decides that if they've decided to live with it, then so will he.
Sometimes it becomes obvious that they're not really living with it as much as they'd like to believe, but Gintoki has figured that this is one problem that even he can't fix.