A/N: I was naive and thought that this would run around the length of the other two-2k, maybe 3k. Obviously, that didn't happen. Sequel to both Dreams are just shackles and Warm milk with honey.
One would think that with all the screeching and yelling Shinpachi does during the day—at Kagura-chan and Gin-san for beating that old megane joke into the ground, at getting caught between Kondou-san and Kyuubei-san's ongoing fight over Ane-ue's honor, at literally nearly dying because of some stupid, overdramatic reason—one would really think that Shinpachi, resident weak link and straight man, would scream himself awake from a nightmare. He'd never been the most emotionally reserved or removed from even vaguely upsetting situations, so Shinpachi doesn't really blame them. And honestly? They wouldn't be half wrong. As a kid dreaming about little-kid fears, Shinpachi would screech and wake up and bang an elbow against the closest piece of furniture and well, after that, he'd bawl about the nightmare and the elbow because what if the nightmare happened and what if he'd broken something he'd never move his arm again Ane-ue, Ane-ue! Then Ane-ue would come in, hair cropped short because she hated it getting in the way and thought it was cute so there, Otou-san! and Otou-san allowed it because Ane-ue was frighteningly good with her naginata even then. Anyway, she would come in, and hug him, and then smack him on the head because samurai don't cry over hit elbows or giant spiders or talking char, idiot! Then they'd fall asleep together and everything would be right in the world.
That night, though, with Shinpachi older but not old enough, he dreamed of harder truths. He woke quietly, his face wet with tears but oddly relaxed, and stared at the ceiling. The realization of where he was came in split-second observations: it wasn't home, and oh the boards are newer there from when Kagura punched Gin-san into the ceiling over the last serving of rice last month, he's with them for the night. Because that job went late. Right.
Shinpachi blinked, and saw the imprint of Obi-nii-san's eyes, lit up red by the glow of his Beam Saber, on the back of his eyelids. Squeezing his eyes shut only made it worse; Ane-ue between them, her hand raised and her eyes lowered—the dry smell of concrete dust and the strain of his tight jaw—Obi-nii-san's suddenly brown—no. Shinpachi opened his eyes, lifted one hand to wipe the tears off his cheeks, and stared at the ceiling in an attempt to keep his mind off that fight, five months ago.
There's moonlight filtering in through the window, Shinpachi noticed. He latched onto how it made everything kind of silver—silver striped with shadow from the bars, the grain catching the light and glistening, if he looked close enough. Which was hard without his glasses on, so he reached over to the table next to the couch and searched with one hand for them. Of course, he only succeeded in hitting them off the edge—he'd set them too close to the side again, damn it all—and listened to the glasses hit the floor with a dull clatter. It was harsh, in the silence. Shinpachi stared at the ceiling, arm still hovering over the table, listening for any sound from Kagura-chan or Gin-san.
Nothing. No snoring, which was surprising considering Kagura-chan's occasional ability to wake up even Otose-san. There wasn't even Gin-san's quiet rumble. Shinpachi would be suspicious if he hadn't seen them both near stumbling into bed; Kagura-chan had nearly fallen out of her closet, even. He would have made a joke if it weren't for how exhausted he was too. As it was, he'd barely taken off his glasses before falling onto the couch.
Right. Glasses. Shinpachi wondered if it would even be worth it to search them out. It was late, he was tired, and he was sure something exhausting would happen tomorrow too. Look at who he worked with! Sleep was better to get than glasses. Experimentally, he shut his eyes. He willed himself to think of Tsuu-chan's latest concert: how cute she looked in her latest mini-kimono, crossed and uncrossed lips wrapping across the fabric. A smile stretched across his face at the thought of her dyed purple hair, the adorable kanzashii holding it up, metal glinting in the concert lights and then metal spinning out into the air, broken by a single strike, Obi-nii-san falling backwards with the smallest, softest sigh that Shinpachi had ever heard.
Shinpachi opened his eyes, rolled off the couch as carefully as he could, and searched the floor with his fingers for his glasses. He wasn't getting any more sleep tonight, Shinpachi knew. Not when Ane-ue wasn't there to hold him and be held in return, the way they had the first few nights of their vacation after Obi-nii-san's sacrifice.
It really had done them good, Shinpachi thought as his fingers brushed one cool metal arm of his glasses, to get away for a while. Warm weather. Sun. Women in bikinis. Chocolate-covered macademia nuts. No worrying about jobs or money or anything. Much. Blinking at the fuzzy shadow of Gin-san's desk, Shinpachi dragged his glasses from under the couch and put them on after wiping residual tears from his eyes.
When he next looked at the ceiling, he could see the woodgrain in more detail, could see the patchwork repair job done on the door leading to the entryway in subtly different shades of paper. He could see how one floorboard jutted up, and wondered if Gengai-san would have a hammer or something that they could pound it down with. 'They' didn't include Kagura-chan, though. She would just hit a hole through the floor. And not only did Shinpachi not want to deal with a broken floor, but he especially did not want to deal with Otose-san's righteous fury at having her ceiling broken through. It just would end badly for everybody. Especially Shinpachi, because Kagura-chan and Gin-san were like five times faster than he was and wouldn't blink at throwing him to the wolves if it heightened their chances of survival.
Well, not wolves. It was actually a robot maid, a neko-girl, and a baba that really was probably a Baba Yaga or something. Shinpachi would take wolves over that unholy trio. He would give himself to the wolves.
Shinpachi looked over at the Justaway clock in the corner. Quarter past four: it was a shame, Shinpachi thought, that he'd only gotten maybe three hours of sleep. His eyes were sore, so sore, but he didn't close them. Instead, he tamped down on the frustration rising up to press against the back of his nose, press against his eyes and make them water. Shinpachi blinked the welling tears away, then reached under his glasses to wipe them away when that didn't feel like enough. Taking a deep breath, he tried to center himself, exhale shaky. Calm. He needed calm. He watched the second hand click, click, click from the seven to the eight, and wondered how he was supposed to occupy himself quietly without waking Kagura-chan and Gin-san.
Then he wondered if he actually needed to be that conscientious of their sleeping needs. Shinpachi frowned, remembering the time he'd been napping on the couch because nothing was going on only to be woken up ten minutes later by an insistent Kagura-chan who demanded lunch—fine, Shinpachi, it's really second lunch but that's only because the lunch you made was so pathetic and weak and I'm a growing girl, not a megane like you!—and took over the couch as soon as he'd gone to the kitchen. Or the time they'd slept at the Shimura home and Gin-san shook him awake every half hour, stuttering about ghosts and how no he wasn't scared of ghosts but maybe Shinpachi was and he just needed to stay awake, okay Pattsan, okay? Or the time Sadaharu literally sat on him because Shinpachi had laid down on the floor without giving him water, or the time they'd insisted on making dinner right when he was starting to have a good dream, or—
No, Shinpachi decided. He did not need to be considerate, not with the shit he had to put up with from those two. Three, he thought, narrowing his eyes at the closet door, where Sadaharu was probably taking a break from trying to tear the metal sheet at the back of the closet down. Three.
Rice sounded good. Rice and miso soup and maybe it was a little early for breakfast, but if he took a page out of Kagura-chan's book that would be fine. It was just this once. So Shinpachi stood from the couch, fiddled with his glasses, and began to shuffle across the floor. With one hand, he braced the right side of his neck and stretched it, then switched sides and repeated. As he slipped into the kitchen—he wasn't doing great at this whole purposefully loud thing—he stretched back until a ripple of cracks and pops echoed up his spine. Ane-ue hated it when he did that. She always threatened to give his spine, or his knuckles, or whatever joint it was a good reason to need cracking. Gin-san just mocked him—you're so old already, Shinpachi!—until he moved and something cracked and his face went all screwy-funny. He never appreciated Kagura-chan's cackling then, about curtains matching drapes and poles and when Gin-san yelled about her dirty dirty mind and his pole was working just fine, thank you very much, Kagura-chan would make some snide comment about children and how fast Gin-san seemed to be done at any brothel he ever went to, and it would just devolve from there.
Shinpachi flipped the light switch and crouched to pull their commercial-grade rice cooker from under the sink. He plugged it in, then stepped over it to open the tall cupboard for all their rice and pulled the sieve off the crooked hook inside. He crouched. The light buzzed overhead, aggressive, the way it did when it was about to burn out. Shinpachi hoped it wouldn't do it anytime soon; he'd like to see. With a big yawn, he tugged the closest bag of rice open and felt around inside for the scoop. The cooker could hold up to 60 cups of raw rice. Kagura usually ate half the cooker for breakfast on light days, so they needed it. Shinpachi scooped ten cups of rice into the sieve—any more, and it would be difficult to wash—and rose from his crouch.
He flipped on the faucet, pushed dirty dishes out of the way, and then balanced the sieve in the indent of the drain. Out of habit, his hand hovered at the side of the sieve for a moment, just to make sure it didn't tip—and there it was, it was falling over into his hand. He righted it, hovered a moment more, and then reached for the tasuki hanging on a hook near the mirror over the sink. The water ran, a white rush of sound, as he tied his sleeves back with the tasuki. His motions reflected in the mirror caught his eye, and he stopped mid-step on the second sleeve to look at himself.
The skin under his eyes looked a little bruised. The rims were red, the eyes suspiciously shiny. His eyebrows were starting to grow into a unibrow. That escapade sometimes gave him nightmares, but they were ones he could laugh at. There was also a zit on the right side of the bridge of his nose, he noticed, and a couple were starting to emerge on his chin. Unlike his facial hair. Shinpachi snorted at the thought, and finished tying the tasuki. The subtle scent of wet rice rose, then fell, to the back of his throat. He reached out to the sieve full of rice, and then began scrubbing them, fingers curled loosely and palm pressed against the grains. The water ran milky under the sieve when he lifted it to check a few minutes later, and he continued to wash.
This was only the first batch of rice to be washed. Once the water ran clear, Shinpachi would dump this load in the cooker's pot and start the process all over again, four more times. Fifty cups of dry rice. About a hundred cooked. He really didn't need to make much, but they didn't have a smaller cooker and it would be such a waste only to make a little and then have to clean the pot. Shinpachi could just feed the rest to Kagura-chan and Gin-san after his early breakfast, or pre-breakfast snack. Or, if he was feeling vindictive enough, he'd leave the dirty pot in the sink and bring the rice down to Otose-san. Not only would that throw Kagura-chan into hysterics, it would endear him to Otose-san, which might be nice the next time she came around to badger Gin-san for rent money.
The water ran clear. Shinpachi lifted his hand closer to the faucet and let the water wash away the grains of rice clinging to his hand. Once they were gone, he lifted the sieve with both hands, shook it a couple times to settle the rice and get some of the water out, and swung it over to the pot. Water dripped onto the floor between the sink and the cooker, fanned out from inertia and glinting in the buzzing, flickering light.
Shinpachi crouched, tipped the sieve, and watched the rice crash down into the pot in a clumping spill of dully-gleaming grain. He tapped the edge of the sieve against the side of the pot, and then reached in to scrape the rest out of the sieve—especially out of that one crimped corner, where they all liked to go and none of them liked to come out.
That task done, he stood up, eyes flicking to his reflection, then back. He turned and stepped back to the rice cupboard, reached for the cup, and began to scoop. One, two, three, four…
The repetitive tasks were nice, he thought right around scoop eight. They dulled his mind, smoothed the sharp edges and let him immerse himself in the moment. He was never the greatest at seated meditation, at closing his eyes and focusing on nothing, but intense focus on one thing, on one task? That brought him the most peace. It was part of why he'd picked up cooking in the first place—well, that he'd kept with it.
Twenty minutes later—it felt like twenty minutes, at least—he was on sieve number four when he heard a voice. "Shinpachi?"
He looked up, saw Kagura-chan in the doorway. She looked exhausted. He felt a little bad for banging about so early, all of a sudden. She was just a kid, even if she was a menace that denied him sleep more times than he could count. "Kagura-chan, it's okay. Go back to bed."
She hummed, and stopped rubbing her eye. The light in the hallway behind her was still pale, not that Shinpachi expected otherwise. The sun began to rise around six, these days, and it wasn't anywhere close to that time.
"Can't," she mumbled. She took a couple tottering steps forward, feet bare. "You're so noisy."
"I'll try to be quieter," he said. The rice under his palm ground against itself, pressed into his skin and nestled into the creases of his digits. He clenched, it pushed out in the gaps between his fingers, and he relaxed and it stayed molded in the shape of his grasp. "Go back to sleep, Kagura-chan."
Instead of turning back around, she shuffled forward and bent down by the rice cooker. "Rice?"
Shinpachi sighed and turned back to the rice. Of course she wasn't going to listen to him. Why would she? "I woke up and was hungry, so I decided to make something."
Kagura-chan hummed again. Her presence behind him was—distracting. He couldn't lose himself in the rush of water, the underlying whine of the pipes having to work, in the rub of grain on grain or the slight squeak of metal on metal. If he focused on her behind him, he could just make out her breathing. It was slow, almost deliberate. It kind of made him want to turn around.
He lifted the sieve and watched the water filtering through the rice. It was almost clear enough—just one more go. Shinpachi lowered it into the sink, held it with one cold hand and began to rub it cleaner with the other.
"How many?"
"How many what?" He asked. The glare of the metal sink was getting to him. It would be worse if the light weren't yellow, he thought.
"Cups. Of rice."
"This is forty," he said.
A pause. "Can we cook it after that?"
He paused mid-scrunch, and shifted to look over his shoulder. Kagura-chan was playing with the rice already in the cooker, one index finger pushing at individual grains. He let the water run and watched her for a bit. "Are…are you hungry?"
Kagura-chan didn't nod. She didn't demand he go faster. She smiled in a way that didn't push the corners of her eyes up and shrugged. Kagura-chan wasn't looking at him.
Shinpachi looked at her, really, really looked at her. Her hair was less of a mess than usual. She had one arm curled around her knees, which were together instead of splayed out without a care for basic decency. Her back was curved over the cramped lines of her legs, her front pressed against the tops of her thighs. The skin under her eyes, though in shadow, looked darker than it should.
At his silence, Kagura-chan raised her head. She scowled. "Whatchu starin at, four-eyes?"
He wondered if he should just let it go. That was kind of status quo here, the way it wasn't with him and Ane-ue. "You look tired," he ventured.
"Better than you," she shot back. She jabbed one finger into the rice.
He turned back to the rice, and continued to wash it. He could hear her now, playing with the rice. It was faint under the noise he himself was making, but he could still hear it.
Time passed like that, him washing rice, Kagura-chan getting her dirty hands all over the rice he'd already cleaned. She was tired, though; he could excuse it. Wasn't like anybody else was going to eat it. Now that Kagura-chan knew it was there, Shinpachi sure wasn't going to be able to get into Otose-san's good graces by giving her cheap food. Maybe there was another way to avoid being collateral damage next time rent was due. Overdue.
He lifted the sieve again. The water ran clear. With a satisfied hum, he set the rice in the sink again and turned off the faucet. The handle squealed shut, even though it never made a noise turning on. Maybe Gengai-san had something for that too.
"Is it ready?"
Shaking the rice to level it out and to get the water out, Shinpachi shook his head. "It still needs to be filled with water."
"Fine." She shifted, and he heard the pot being pulled out of the cooker. He stepped to the side just in time for Kagura-chan to set the cooker the space between dishes. "Here. How much?"
Shinpachi tipped the rice into the pot and listened to the sound of it. He shook the sieve, then held it with one hand as he pointed out the right line after a moment's calculation. "To here."
"Okay." Kagura-chan reached over and turned the faucet on. Barely a squeak. Shinpachi narrowed his eyes at it. What kind of faucet didn't squeak one way but squeaked the other, anyways?
He scraped the rice out of the sieve with cold fingers, and then flushed the remaining grains out under the faucet before setting the sieve to the side. They stood there, Kagura-chan's shoulder a fist's-breadth from his arm, and watched the water flow. The force of it made the water in the pot ripple in the light overhead, made little frothy bubbles bloom into temporary existence on its turbulent surface. Shinpachi took in a deep breath, and let it out. He closed his eyes. Red. He opened them and tried to quash the sudden welling of frustration, because he was supposed to be over it already.
"Why'd you wake up anyways?"
He glanced at Kagura-chan. She was watching the water carefully. "I," he started, then stopped.
The water reached the right line. Kagura-chan reached forward, turned the faucet off with a sharp squeal, and then settled back onto her heels. She grasped both sides of the pot, and looked at him. "You?"
Obi-nii-san, he thought. Overcome with the urge to start crying again, he pinched the bridge of his nose under his glasses and took another deep breath. Keep it together, keep it together. The cold of his fingers helped. He focused on it. "Bad dream," he said, finally.
There was a moment of silence. Shinpachi saw nothing other than starbursts of phantom light and pressure on the backs of his eyelids.
"Oh," she said. He heard her lift the pot out of the sink, heard her set it into the pot. The catch of the lid, the shift of its feet against the floor, and then the click of the dial and the switch to turn the cooker on: he clung to the sounds and tried to distract himself with them.
"I should make the soup," he said.
"Instant?" she asked.
"Do we have any dashi? Miso, tofu, scallions?"
"Umm." He opened his eyes, watched her peer into the refrigerator. She pulled a couple things out—a tub of white miso paste, bargain tofu, and a pair of sad, limp scallions. "Where's dashi?"
He bent over and pulled the ingredients off the floor. Thankfully, she'd put the scallions on top of the miso paste tub. "If it's not in the fridge, there might be a container on the shelf above it. Maybe we have kombu and bonito flakes?"
Kagura-chan hummed and pushed the door shut with her foot. She rummaged around the shelf and pulled out the necessary ingredients, then passed them to Shinpachi. He plugged in the hotplate and set it to medium heat before digging around for a pan.
He didn't mean to be loud, but must have succeeded, because by the time he'd pulled a battered saucepan out and filled it with tapwater, Gin-san spoke up from the doorway. "What the fuck are you guys doing up already? It's still darker than Madao's future."
"What time is it?" Shinpachi asked. He added a couple slices of kombu to the simmering water and began to watch it for the boil.
"Uh," Gin-san said. Shinpachi heard him step out of the room, and there were a few moments before he came back. "Like, five fifty? My eyes are crusty, it might be a little before or after."
"You're just crusty," Kagura-chan said. She had a knife out. And a cutting board. And was actually cutting the scallions, unprompted, while Shinpachi is in the kitchen. If he weren't so tired, and if that morning weren't already weird with people actually being up, Shinpachi would be amazed. Part of that though might be the fact she's cutting them on the floor, in typical Kagura-chan fashion.
"Like I said though," Gin-san drawled, but there's something in the undertones of his voice that Shinpachi doesn't know how to read. "What are you two doing up? Growing kids need their sleep, need to stay a good distance away from the TV when they watch their favorite programs or their favorite weather girls, all that stuff."
"Couldn't sleep," Kagura-chan and Shinpachi said at the same time. It's almost the same tone, too.
Gin-san shuffled closer and peered over Shinpachi's shoulder. He smelled really, really strongly of sweat, and Shinpachi shifted a little away. "That's why you go back to sleep until you fall asleep," he said. "You kids are too young to be insomniacs. That's Gin-san's job."
"Shinpachi's making breakfast," Kagura-chan said. "I found him washing rice and decided to make sure he didn't eat it all."
Shinpachi rolled his eyes. "Yes, because my human stomach can handle that much rice," he said. He tried not to think about how easily 'food for him' turned into 'food for everybody.' At least he'll make somebody a good husband one day. Or be around to save his sister's spouse from the decision of death by char vs death by starvation.
"And why was Shinpachi up, eh?" Gin-san elbowed him in the ribs. Absentmindedly, Shinpachi swatted at him with his cooking chopsticks. "Kid dreams? Big kid dreams? You finally ascending the ladder into adulthood, Megane? Dreaming about getting those lenses rubbed?"
Shinpachi snorted. The water began to show signs of boiling, so he pulled the kombu out and set it over the edge of the sink. Steam rose in billowing gusts, barely visible in the cheap lighting. He popped the container of bonito flakes open, added by feel, and then popped the container shut and tossed it to Kagura without looking. She yelped, there was a clattering noise, but no retaliation was forthcoming so he counted himself lucky.
Gin-san stepped away. The air was a little less stale, and Shinpachi tried to take in as surreptitious a breath as he could. He brought the broth to a simmer and stirred, and felt suddenly very, very tired.
"Shinpachi?"
His chopsticks were loose in his fingers. He tightened his grip and looked over his shoulder at Gin-san. "Hmm?"
Gin-san stared at him a few moments longer, and then looked down at Kagura-chan. She'd moved on to the tofu, and was cutting it in careful, slow slices. While he was distracted, Shinpachi pulled the pan from the heat and set it on the counter to let the bonito flakes steep.
"Kagura-chan," Gin-san said, uncharacteristically slowly. "Kagura-chan, do you want me to take over the cutting."
"No," Kagura-chan said. Shinpachi bent and scraped the cut scallions into the bowl of his hands. He stood, and realized he didn't' know quite where to put them. How was miso soup made again? He didn't need the scallions yet.
"Do…do you want a bowl for that, Pattsuan?"
"I. Probably." Shinpachi blinked and tried to remember the steps. "And another small one, for the miso?"
"Tell you what," Gin-san said. "I know how to make miso. You and Kagura go—go sit on the couch. Or something. I'll finish it up."
"No," Shinpachi said. "I started it, I can finish it." Kagura-chan made a noise of affirmation somewhere below him. The scallions were suddenly out of his hands and in a bowl. He didn't remember that happening. It was like seeing Ane-ue's charred tamagoyaki and rice attempts and trying to run but suddenly finding it in his mouth. Except less deadly.
Gin-san pulled the rice sieve over and tipped the broth over. There was already a bowl underneath to catch the broth as the bonito flakes were strained out. "You kids are making me scared. I haven't been this scared since Sakamoto tried to make us all food on less than five hours of sleep over a seventy hour period. I'm more awake. Let's keep the bloodshed in the kitchen to a minimum."
"You're the one who attacks me when I get into the strawberry milk," Kagura-chan grumbled. Her tofu cubes were getting bigger and bigger. Shinpachi crouched down to fix the problem and had to hold his head. Well, he realized, at least he wasn't remembering Obi-nii-san—shit. So much for that.
"Hey," Gin-san said. "My precious strawberry milk is precious and off-limits and there is no maximum blood-spilling when it's involved."
Shinpachi watched the slow glint of the knife as Kagura-chan moved it. He shouldn't have been watching it, because that was just inviting bad memories in, but he did anyways. It slid through the tofu, the latter soft, yielding to the pressure, the former not even sharpened but sharp enough that it mattered. Shinpachi wondered, again, if Obi-nii-san had let him win. If he'd made himself hold back so that Shinpachi and his family wouldn't die. He'd sacrificed himself so they wouldn't, after all. And Shinpachi was—he was weak, weaker than anybody he knew. Except for Baka Ouji and his attendant. And probably Madao. But really, that wasn't saying much.
Obi-nii-san definitely let him win. He reached out for the knife and started cutting Kagura-chan's blocks into things more resembling cubes. The handle was slick in his palm, and he couldn't focus well, but he pressed on. Slice by slice, cut by cut, he focused on how the feel of the hilt of the knife was so different from the hilt of the sword, how there was no red glinting or reflecting.
Kagura-chan's forehead pressed against his shoulder. The knife slipped out of his hand and into the pile of lopsided tofu. He blinked down at her. "Kagura-chan?"
"Mmmmm," Kagura-chan said. "Just a couple seconds, Shin-chan."
Chopsticks clattered in the sink. Shinpachi listened to the short echo of wood against metal before it was drowned out by Gin-san's voice. "Okay, no no no, I did not pay 50 yen for you to just sleep all over our food. Get up you two, get up." Gin-san got up close and pulled them up to standing positions. Shinpachi breathed in his rank, sweaty stench, and covered his nose.
"You reek, Gin-san," he said.
"Don't you know that's what grown men do?" Gin-san said. He spoke quietly, though, and it confused Shinpachi. "Eat, drink, sweat, and play pachinko. Kids like you just go back to sleep instead of being awake at ass-o'clock in the morning."
"Don't wanna," Kagura-chan whined. Shinpachi nodded, even as he and Kagura were escorted out of the kitchen.
"You guys aren't even going to stay upright, are you?" Gin-san muttered. "Okay. New plan. Get in here." He opened his door and kicked the covers away before setting them on his futon.
"It stinks," Shinpachi said. He also didn't move.
Gin-san groaned, muttered something, and then stomped off. Kagura-chan found his shoulder again. Her breaths started to even out, but they'd hitch every once in a while, and she'd tense, and then it would happen all over again. He wrapped an arm around her to keep her steady, and it seemed to help a little.
Gin-san returned and dumped the layers of a clean futon on the ground a layer at a time. "Climb on in," he said. "Get some sleep."
Shinpachi looked up. Gin-san's bedhead looked to have twice the volume it usually did, by nature of the light catching the filaments of flyaway hairs. "You?"
"What about me? I'm going to finish breakfast." Gin reached over and pressed against Shinpachi's back. "Go over to the other one if this stinks too much."
"You're tired too," Shinpachi said. He shook Kagura-chan from her light doze, and they crawled over in an uncoordinated tangle of limbs.
Gin-san scoffed. The light blinked off. "Real Adults are energized even after only a few hours! More energized than the creep in the bunny costume in those battery ads, even."
"No wonder you're brain dead, then," Shinpachi said. "Lack of sleep has killed off your…your things." He reached up, right handed, to pull his glasses off. Kagura-chan was gripping his right arm, her forehead again at his shoulder. He could feel the warm, soft huff of her breath through the fabric of his sleeve.
"My things, huh. Sure, four-eyes," Gin-san said. The next thing Shinpachi heard was the sound of the door sliding shut, and Gin-san's footsteps into the kitchen area.
Shinpachi reached down, pulled one of the blankets up and over himself and Kagura-chan by feel alone. It was soft with age, and smelled both old and like the flowery laundry soap that Otose-san bought that Gin-san liked to nick whenever Yorozuya ran out. He breathed it in; clean, like spring mornings with Ane-ue during their childhood, when they'd make flower crowns that fell apart seconds after being coronated with them.
Obi-nii-san had gone with them sometimes. Shinpachi wrapped his arm around Kagura-chan, turned on his side so that he could set his chin on the crown of her head. Her hair tickled his nose, so he shifted until it didn't anymore. She mumbled something, and then she was gripping the back of his shirt, the cloth shifting and pulling in response. He inhaled, and then exhaled slow. Exhaustion made it easy to ignore the way his left arm was curled uncomfortably between them.
The side of his hand rested against the space between her shoulder and her collarbone; he had the sudden thought that this was somehow inappropriate. Kagura-chan was a girl, just beginning puberty. He was a teenage boy. It would be frowned upon—Shinpachi made to shift back, but Kagura-chan grumbled and pulled him back.
"Don't think," she said. "Mami said that if you let them, they'll stop you from sleeping."
If he were more awake, Shinpachi would have argued. Instead, he went pliant. Focused: on the smell of clean memories, the softness of Kagura-chan's pajamas, her warmth like Ane-ue's when they were children, the muffled sounds of Gin-san finishing the miso in the kitchen. On his breaths: in, out, in, out, in…
Later—it had to have been later, because he was on his back, Kagura-chan's leg kicked over his and her hand fisted in the shoulder of his sleeve, still tied back—he half-woke. Something had him tilting his head to the right, and there Gin-san was in the dim, dim morning light. His back was to the wall, and he was watching them with an expression Shinpachi didn't know. Not having his glasses on didn't help.
"Go back to sleep," Gin-san said. He shifted his legs so that the left was bent up. "It's only been thirty minutes."
Shinpachi watched his blurry form. Even without his glasses, though, he could read the slack in Gin's shoulders. "You too," he mumbled. "Your stinky bed is right there."
"I told you," Gin-san said, "adults only need—"
"Fuck that," Shinpachi said. "Stop. Stop doing." Shinpachi bent his elbow and waved his right hand around. "That. Just—just sleep."
Gin-san didn't move. Shinpachi remembered days and nights of doing that, of watching his sister do that at their dying father's bedside. That's when he'd learned to make miso, and porridge, because Ane-ue was terrifying in the kitchen and they didn't actually want to hasten their father's death.
"We're not gonna disappear," Shinpachi said, and closed his eyes. "Just sleep. Don't think."
He waited for Gin-san to respond, and when he didn't, Shinpachi dragged his eyes open and glared. "Gin-san. Seriously."
Gin-san was quiet moments longer, before he sighed. Shinpachi watched him stand up. "Fine, fine, fine," Gin-san groused with no real ire. "Have it your way."
He turned his head and followed Gin-san's motions over Kagura-chan's head: kneeling on the futon, shimmying down its length, and pulling the covers up. Gin-san huffed, but didn't speak.
Shinpachi closed his eyes. A few minutes later, right on the cusp of sleep, he heard Gin-san mutter to himself, "Huh. This does stink."
Far enough into sleep to not laugh, Shinpachi managed a smile, and curled into Kagura. His arm draped over her side, his fingers arched in the air, fingernails brushing fabric. Later, when they woke up and the sun was high and Catherine-san was knocking at the front door wondering if their lazy asses were asleep or if they'd finally kicked the bucket yet, they rolled apart and didn't talk about it. They heated up the miso soup, plugged the rice cooker back in to warm. Gintoki argued with Kagura-chan about who should clean up the shit on the floor and who should go retrieve Sadaharu. Shinpachi ended up having to pick up said shit. They got another request, and ambled out to go rescue Moriyama-san's favorite cat from a mechanical tree.
But Shinpachi didn't dream, and Kagura-chan looked less tired, and Gin-san didn't stare at them for moments on end like he was trying to make himself believe they were really there.