[A.N.: Technically set sometime after the Dekoboko arc, since Tae's feelings on Kyuubei during that whole fiasco are a bit relevant, but really this fic is just set at any old time in Gintama's usual beautiful timeless timeline.]
.-.-.-.
Tae offers her hand instead of her arm when they step out into the street one morning.
Kyuubei looks at the hand, and then looks at Tae, and then looks at the hand again and says, "Tae-chan...?"
"No?" says Tae. Her voice is carelessly bright; her cheeks have begun to pinken, and it costs her effort it shouldn't cost to cast a smile Kyuubei's way – equally careless, equally bright. "I'm sorry, Kyuu-chan; I suppose I thought – or I suppose I didn't. I suppose I wasn't thinking at all. Please forget it, if you'd rather—"
Her fingers are curling back into their palm. Kyuubei seizes her hand before they can make it all the way, and says nothing, and slides a surreptitious, hot-faced glance Tae's way: is this all right?
And of course, it's quite all right.
It's far more than all right, in fact – except for the chaos of Tae's thoughts, which swim together into a single refrain that reminds her, over and over again, as though she could possibly forget, that the hand in her hand is Kyuubei's, and isn't it so much smaller than the last time she held it, and doesn't that soaring, vertiginous shock inside her stomach feel so much more startlingly clear now that no skulking Amanto cultists are holding the pair of them at cannon-point...
And Kyuubei's thoughts must have spiralled off into a similar crash from a different track, because what feels like a great gulf has opened up between them, both of them stiff-armed, both holding their hands away as though each of them holds not just a hand in their own but instead something terribly precious, and terribly dangerous, and terribly liable to explode if jostled.
Tae's not afraid of anything. She won't be afraid of this, either.
She takes a deep breath; she gives Kyuubei's hand a determined squeeze. "Last night," she says, as though there's nothing's out of the ordinary here at all, "last night, at the club – there was a man who smelled so awful, Kyuu-chan, really, you wouldn't believe it; so I refused to serve him, of course, and he said he'd only come to the club in the first place so that I would serve him, which I told him was completely understandable but didn't change the fact he smelled really rather like the crusted arsehole of an unwashed tramp – in fact, that's exactly what he smelled like! Just like Hasegawa-san, Kyuu-chan, if you can imagine that... And do you know what I told him, Kyuu-chan?"
Kyuubei thinks hard. "Did you tell him... he was disgusting, Tae-chan?"
"Utterly disgusting," says Tae firmly. "And then I stamped on his toes and evicted him from the premises, and if he comes back it'll be on crutches, and if there's anything more pathetic than a man on crutches, it's a man on crutches whose crutches I've just taken from him and snapped in half and shoved sharp end first into whichever of his bodily cavities happen to be nearest at the time – which is precisely what will happen if he comes back, Kyuu-chan."
"Did you tell him that as well, Tae-chan?"
"That and more, Kyuu-chan."
"Good," says Kyuubei, and nods in quiet satisfaction. The great gulf between them has been shrinking, and now it's gone; the stiffness has been softening, and now it's gone. Their hands swing between them as easily as though they've already had a lifetime of practice at it – which, truthfully speaking, they have.
.-.-.-.
.-.-.-.
Really, the whole thing has been a little like a motorbike accident. A passing lorry, the impact, the skid, and in a heartbeat the world is seen from a whole new perspective: back-to-front and upside down, neck snapped in two by whiplash. A little like that, but with fewer broken bones, or at least fewer broken bones for Tae herself – the number of broken bones in her general vicinity remains as constant as ever. In a heartbeat, something changed; in a heartbeat, the world shifted from this perspective to that perspective; in a heartbeat, all of Tae's tidily packaged and labelled and stored-away-for-winter feelings rose up from their store cupboard and demanded re-evaluation.
She loves Kyuubei more than anyone in her life except Shinpachi: that much, Tae has always known. But her heart flipped and plummeted and soared inside her without warning under the circumstances of the Dekoboko cultists, and in the weeks and months that have followed ever since, it's begun to seem as clear as sunlight that the quality of her love for the two of them is different; and it's begun to seem impossible that she ever could have lived without knowing it.
In a way, it isn't much different from the matter of stamping on her customer's toes. For all the shrieking and bawling, all the collapsing to the ground, all the useless clutching at the lumpen puree leaking from his sandals – for all of that nonsense, it had only ever been a playful warning, and toes are such insignificant body parts that their obliteration is hardly worth making a fuss about anyway. It wasn't as though anyone had ripped out his lungs and spat in the ruined cavity, after all. Tae had done only one very small thing, yet it had had a tremendously disproportionate effect.
The manager of Snack Smile had been less than receptive when Tae explained this to him afterwards, but her point remained: something very small can have a tremendous impact.
And it's the same as the way that Shinpachi, after just one bite of dinner every night, will immediately declare himself full to the brim and thoroughly satisfied. It's testament to the high nutritional value of Tae's cooking, of course, and its ability to satisfy a growing teenage boy even in miniscule quantities – but also to the fact that something very small can have a tremendous impact.
Something very small has recently had a tremendous impact on Tae. The very small thing was nothing more remarkable than Kyuubei's hand in hers. The tremendous impact has been the growing certainty that there is nothing more remarkable than Kyuubei's hand in hers.
She knows how she feels. And she knows how Kyuubei feels, too – although if the peculiar way Tae has begun to feel her heart undergoing both terrible pulverisation and wonderful reconstruction every time she's near to Kyuubei is how Kyuubei feels – if that's how Kyuubei has always felt when near to Tae – then it's a marvel, all on its own, that Kyuubei has managed to endure it and survive it for long enough that Tae is finally catching up.
It's been a very long time since either of them was anything but forthright about telling each other how they feel. It's been an even longer time since either of them was anything but forthright about telling each other what they want. Tae is very much in love, and Kyuubei is very much in love: from there, it's really quite straightforward.
.-.-.-.
.-.-.-.
"Really?" says Shinpachi.
"Really," says Tae.
"And you're – it won't be a problem, that Kyuubei-san is – I mean," says Shinpachi, who is looking down at his hands in his lap with great concentration, "well, all I mean is – are you happy, ane-ue?"
"I'm very happy, Shin-chan," says Tae, who is looking at her own folded hands with equally great concentration. There's a funny sort of light, fluttering feeling in her stomach that she hadn't anticipated, and that she hardly recognises; it could be nerves, though it's been so many years since Tae felt anything like it that it's difficult to be sure.
"And you've thought about all the – I mean, not just Kyuubei-san – but everything else," says Shinpachi, "all of it – is it what you want?"
"Do you mean the unimaginably vast Yagyuu fortune or the absurdly extensive Yagyuu property portfolio, Shin-chan? Because I'm quite happy to accept both of those, actually; and as for the network of influential celebrity contacts—"
"You know what I mean, ane-ue," says Shinpachi, in a voice that's growing thicker and thicker, and beginning to sound as though it's straining to stay stable under tremendous pressure.
Tae knows exactly what he means. "It's everything I want, Shin-chan."
"Okay," says Shinpachi. "I mean – good. I mean – that is, I mean—"
He bursts into tears. Tae's heart lurches up her throat with such a jolt it shakes her own tears free; she rubs the sleeve of her kimono across her eyes and laughs a shaky, hiccupy laugh. "Oh, you've set me off now, Shin-chan; what use are we, sitting here crying? What would Obi-one-niisama say, if he could see us now?"
Shinpachi coughs, or maybe laughs, and says: "'Soz to interrupt all y'all, but shouldn't you be training', probably."
"Shin-chan!"
He gives a laugh as shaky as Tae's own: which sets her off, which sets him off, and for a while the east-facing veranda of the Shimura home rings out as much with helpless laughter as with tears. From the kitchen drifts the smell of that evening's pork, on its fifth hour in the oven and blackening nicely, by the scent of it – Tae keeps the smoke alarm disabled, for its oversensitive nose always interferes with the creation of her culinary wonders. Around the far corner of the house, in the training courtyard before the dojo, is the quiet, repetitive sound of footsteps: Kyuubei keeping busy, practising the Tendou Mushin style in the late morning sunshine.
"Just don't kick me out the house," says Shinpachi, when eventually he summons up the fortitude to break apart their hug. He removes his glasses and starts wiping them in his sleeve, which doesn't do an awful lot of good, since occasional tears are still plopping on the lenses even as he dries them off. "You know what Gin-san pays me, or rather what he doesn't, which is to say 'nothing' and 'anything'; and I'm not moving in with those two... Do you have any idea what they keep under their sofa cushions, ane-ue?" he says passionately, and Tae shakes her head. "Me neither! They're crusted into place. I tried to get them up with a crowbar once so I could vacuum underneath, and it couldn't be done."
Tae assumes a look of appropriate distaste. It takes very little effort. "Oh, my."
"'Oh, my' is right," says Shinpachi darkly. He pushes his glasses back on. "Ah... does Kyuubei-san know we were having this conversation? Because I'd like to speak to both of you, if that's okay."
"Of course, Shin-chan. And you've nothing to worry about," says Tae, getting to her feet, "about the house, that is – I really shouldn't think anything much will change, except there'll be no more running into my room when you get nightmares—"
"Ane-ue! I never do that!"
"—and if there's a thunderstorm you'll have to be a big boy and stay in your own bed," Tae concludes, and Shinpachi's cry of outraged protest rings out behind her as she goes off to retrieve Kyuubei from the dojo.
Once retrieved, Kyuubei proves amenable to every one of Shinpachi's heartfelt demands. Shinpachi's heartfelt demands mostly consist of Shinpachi finding increasingly creative and emotional ways to rephrase please make sure my sister is happy every day of her life, and which are all therefore mostly superfluous given Kyuubei's extremely vocal commitment over the years to the defence and protection of Tae's right to happiness; but Kyuubei has no objection to discussing Tae's right to happiness with Shinpachi in extensive detail, and Tae has no objection to listening in.
At last, though, Shinpachi runs out of steam. He nudges up his glasses and looks reflectively at the distant garden hedge, and says, "I really feel like I should have more to say, but... Well, I already know everything about you, Kyuubei-san, don't I?"
Kyuubei thinks intently for a moment. "My shoe size."
"Your... ah, what about your shoe size, Kyuubei-san?"
"Do you know it, Shinpachi-kun?"
"Well – no," says Shinpachi, "but I meant the important things, really – your character, and what you value, and your intentions towards ane-ue—"
"He thinks shoe size isn't important," Kyuubei reports to Tae, in an undertone.
"Oh, I know; isn't it dreadful? You'd think he'd never experienced a blister a day in his life, the way he carries on." Tae presses her fingers to her mouth, overcome by sentiment. "You'd – oh, Kyuu-chan! You'd almost think he's never known what it's like to wear shoes just a little too small!"
"Or a little too large," says Kyuubei, and seizes her hand with a look of blazing sincerity. "If your shoes are a little too large... then they can fall off, Tae-chan. And then if it's raining, your socks get wet."
"And if it's hot, the pavements can burn your feet."
"And if there's been a bar fight recently that ended with someone being thrown through a window and you pass by outside the bar, you could get glass embedded in your feet."
Shinpachi clears his throat. "Ah – Kyuubei-san? I was actually still—"
"And if the glass is dirty from lying in the filthy street," says Tae, eyes falling closed with the force of her emotion, "you could get an infection and have to go to hospital."
"Sorry, ane-ue, could I just—"
"And if the hospital is understaffed and a student nurse is assigned to you but mixes up your files, they might amputate your entire leg instead of removing the glass."
"Kyuubei-san? Excuse me – Kyuubei-san?"
"And if they amputate the wrong leg, then you'd have one leg but you'd still have glass embedded in your foot, and the infection would still be spreading."
"Um – ane-ue? Excuse me—"
"And if the infection reaches your heart, you could die."
Tae clutches Kyuubei's hand fiercely in both of hers, tighter than ever. "And if your files still haven't been sorted out properly, the hospital could notify the wrong family of your death."
"And if your files are never sorted out properly, then your real kin could end up never knowing how or where or when you'd died, or even if you'd died, and they could spend the rest of their lives searching desperately for closure but never finding it, your disappearance haunting them with every breath they take, your memory like a ghost that's allowed them not a moment's peace since that first instant your too-large shoes slipped off."
The passion rings out in Kyuubei's voice. With a great effort, Tae manages at last to say, in a voice of tender wonder: "Kyuu-chan..."
In a voice of equal wonder, Kyuubei says, "Tae-chan..."
Tae brushes tears fiercely away with the back of her hand, and takes a deep breath; Kyuubei blinks hard a few times, and no tears come.
"Oh, don't mind me," says Shinpachi, sounding rather shriller than usual, "I've got all day if you want to keep going, I've certainly got nothing better to do than sit around and wait for you to pay attention to me—"
"That's quite untrue, Shin-chan," says Tae, all business, "you could tidy your bedroom, for a start; you might be a teenage boy, but that's absolutely no reason for you to smell like it."
"I wear a shoe size two," adds Kyuubei.
"I'll bear it in mind, Kyuubei-san," says Shinpachi. His posture is beginning to sink into weariness – but then he suddenly sits straight, struck by thought. "Ah – does this mean Kyuubei-san will stop spending the night from now on?"
"Whyever would it mean that, Shin-chan?"
"Because," says Shinpachi, then looks uncertainly between them, "because you always say it's – indecent. Don't you? Before a wedding, for a bride and – and—"
"Groom," says Kyuubei.
"—groom," says Shinpachi, "to be sleeping together in the same house!"
"In the same room," adds Tae.
"In the same bed," offers Kyuubei.
"Exactly!" says Shinpachi. "You told me yourself, ane-ue, you've been saying it all your life – you always say it's indecent for an unmarried couple to—"
Tae places her hand soothingly on his knee before he can grow agitated enough to hurt himself. "Kyuu-chan and I have had sleepovers with each other since we were ever so little, Shin-chan; we've been having sleepovers almost since you were born, and certainly since you were pooping in your own pants and flinging your nice mushy vegetables across the dinner table. That's just what friendship is, for the two of us, and I don't see any reason to change that now."
"The reason," says Shinpachi, with dogged persistence, "is you're engaged! It's you who always says it, ane-ue, not me – sleepovers are different for couples due to marry, it's not the same as sleepovers between friends, it's you who says—"
"Different how?" asks Kyuubei.
Shinpachi breaks off. He looks at Kyuubei for a moment, and then he looks at Tae, and then he looks back to Kyuubei and weakly says, "Ah – is that a serious question, Kyuubei-san...?"
"Very serious," says Kyuubei, very seriously.
"Then I, ah – maybe you should, I mean – you could talk about that with. With, um. With... with ane-ue. Oh, God," says Shinpachi plaintively, and casts another look of desperation Tae's way.
"Are you implying Kyuu-chan doesn't know about sex, Shin-chan?" Tae says curiously.
"Oh," says Kyuubei, surprised, and thinks hard for a moment. "Then I'm sorry, Shinpachi-kun. It's possible I misunderstood; I thought you were describing something that would change due to our enga—"
"Isn't it a nice day today, Kyuu-chan!" Tae cries at once, clapping her hand securely across Kyuubei's mouth, but she needn't have bothered: Shinpachi's wail of dismay drowns out the end of the sentence anyway.
.-.-.-.
.-.-.-.
"No," says Yagyuu Koshinori. He tosses his badger-striped hair back across a shoulder and ferociously puffs out his chest, and says, "No. Are you out of your mind, Kyuubei? Have you lost your wits? Do you not remember how this ended last time? – how abysmally?"
"I remember, Father."
"It's Papa!"
"With all due respect," says Tae sweetly, which is to say with only very minimal respect, and even that is rather more than due, "things are a bit different this time around, Papa."
"Don't you call me Papa!"
"I'm sorry, would you prefer Father?"
"Neither! You're a great girl, Otae-san, you really are; and you'll make someone a wonderful wife some day. Someone with strong bones and a stomach of iron and an unbreakable skull – I'm sure of it. But you're as out of your mind as Kyuubei if you really think I'm going to let my only daughter marry a woman."
"I'm not your daughter," says Kyuubei.
"What are you, then?"
"I'm Kyuubei," says Kyuubei, unruffled as ever.
"Whatever you are," says Yagyuu Binbokusai, rousing himself from the unconvincingly feigned slumber he's maintained throughout the whole meeting so far, "you're still inheriting the whole estate after your dad kicks the bucket, aren't you?" He peels open one canny old eye, and flings out a liver-spotted arm in accusation. "Am I right? Kyuubei gets it all, am I right? Eh, Koshinori – you want the Yagyuu heir to be a pitiable bachelor, laughing stock of Edo? You want the Yagyuu heir living in wretched celibacy? You want to bring dishonour down on the family by condemning its heir to a lifetime of lonesome mastur—"
Yagyuu Koshinori rockets to his feet. "You think I'm bringing dishonour down on the family!"
"Yes," Yagyuu Binbokusai says stolidly. He sits up on his tatami, hands resting on his knees. "You remember how crazy you were in love, Koshinori? Because I do. I remember you nearly breaking your neck after the two of you went up on the roof to stargaze and fool around. You were in a cast for weeks, and you looked ridiculous."
"Papa!"
"Ah, just call me Father, won't you? Can you really tell me that you'd ever have let anything stop you from marrying her? If you'd come to me, and I'd forbidden it – would you have listened?"
"It's not the same," says Yagyuu Koshinori.
"I think it is," says Yagyuu Binbokusai.
"Grandfather's right, anyway," says Yagyuu Kyuubei, very quietly. "You can't stop me from marrying Tae-chan."
They go by Kyuubei's bedroom on their way out, without any discussion of the fact that that's where they're headed. It's plain inside, and a little stuffy for the fact that it hasn't been much lived in lately; Tae slides open the veranda doors and the cool breeze rustles in. They sit together and watch for the occasional flick of a koi's tail in the waters of the sprawling ornamental ponds.
"Shin-chan is an awful lot like our father, you know," says Tae, after a while. "After all the bluster, all he really cares about is the happiness of the people he loves, and our father was the same. I'm happy, so my father would be happy: I'm certain of it."
It takes a little while before any answer comes. In the meantime Tae's hand creeps across the narrow space between them; her littlest finger links with Kyuubei's, and at last Kyuubei lets out a great heavy sigh, sudden as an unexpected puncture. "I think I'm the same way, Tae-chan."
"I think I am too, Kyuu-chan."
"That Koshinori'll come around," announces Yagyuu Binbokusai, emerging from the crawlspace beneath the veranda with so little warning that it's fluke more than anything that saves him from receiving Tae's sandal stamped directly, reflexively, into his face. "He thinks it's all his fault, Kyuubei, you see – which of course it is in one way and isn't in another, since you're a grown adult now and you can make your own decisions, no matter what he and I may or may not have been responsible for doing to you in the past—"
"Grandpa," begins Tae, even sweeter than before, lifting her foot in preparation to stamp again—
"Ah, ah, Otae-san! You'll never be a part of the family if you can't learn how to pretend to look interested when I'm talking," says Yagyuu Binbokusai, and continues without pause: "Your father's got a lot of regrets, Kyuubei, and he's dealing with them about as well as a baby that's just recently realised it probably shouldn't have pooped in its nappy seventeen years ago if it didn't like the thought of having poop in its nappy for the next seventeen years. Not that you're poop, of course, Kyuubei; I regret that comparison much the way your father regrets the way he raised you. Ah – and much the way I regret that comparison, too. Listen: you two do whatever you like, and he'll come around. He certainly will. I'll see to it," announces Yagyuu Binbokusai, and worms back out of sight beneath the veranda once again.
Silence reigns again, for a little while. The flick of an iridescent tail, out in the shadows of the ornamental bridge; the quiet shushing sound of the ornamental fountain; the far off calls of students training in the dojo.
At last, Tae says, "Your family seems to get stranger every time I see them, Kyuu-chan."
"I've seen them every day of my life and that's still true, Tae-chan."
.-.-.-.
.-.-.-.
"Eh?" Gintoki says. "Is this a re-run? Kagura-chan, check the calendar; we aren't due to start re-runs until July, but perhaps the studio's run out of money in the meantime and needs to stall for time while they slap together some new content. Or – wait," he says suddenly, frantically, swinging his boots from his desk and sitting forwards in a posture of barely controlled urgency, "wait – it isn't July, is it? I know I slept late this morning, but I didn't think it was that late – but then it wouldn't be the first time I've hibernated a hangover away; I missed most of last October after that old Madao fished some unholy liquor out of a dumpster in honour of my birthday—"
"Still March, Gin-chan," Kagura reports from the kitchen, "and no re-runs scheduled yet, either." She bounds back into the main room, half of a neon green plastic skeleton swinging merrily from one hand and bouncing along the floor behind her, and tosses it aside for Sadaharu to chew on. "Do you think they're just recycling old plots and hoping no one will notice?"
"Could be, Kagura-chan, it definitely could be. Aa, this is bad, this is very bad..."
"But it's very trendy to be conscious of the environment nowadays – perhaps this recycling is to conserve energy. The studio's energy, so they don't have to worry about new material, and can worry about what they're having for dinner instead." She hops up to sit on the desk with the light-footed grace of two cement trucks colliding at full speed on the expressway. "What are we having for dinner, Gin-chan?"
"Dinner? Dinner, Kagura-chan? Given the situation, do you really think we have time to spare for such trivial matters as dinner?"
"Dinner isn't trivial, you good-for-nothing cheapskate! I'll show you trivial, I'll show you a trivial head-wound—"
Tae coughs politely into her hand.
The screams cut off at once. Frozen in their tracks – she with a heavy marble paperweight upraised, he scrabbled halfway down the back of his chair – Kagura and Gintoki peer around at her.
"We'll buy you dinner," Tae says. "So there's no need to worry about it." At the identical wails of joy, she amends: "Just Kagura-chan, of course. It's important to take care of children, but an adult man can look after himself."
"He can't," says Kagura, "but don't worry about that, big sis." She tosses the paperweight aside and launches herself across the room, plummeting down at Kyuubei's other side with a conversational, "Yakiniku?"
"Aa, but this is bad... It only means one thing when a series goes into unscheduled re-runs. First the quality of animation falls, and then the viewing figures fall, and then the contract falls through and sometimes the lead producer falls too, from a high bridge or high window..." Gintoki rubs his forehead, gazing at the chaotic desk before him with a look of troubled woe, and then he seems to come to some decision: he shoves a pile of paperwork aside, claps his palms to the desk's surface, and gets to his feet. "Otae-san, Kyuubei-san. We'll take the job."
"What job?" says Kyuubei, and, "I'd prefer tonkatsu," adds Kyuubei.
"There is no job, Gin-san," says Tae.
Gintoki looks at her blankly from behind the desk. "No job?"
"Well, I'd prefer yakiniku," objects Kagura, "and I said it first, so that means I'm the winner, and the winner gets to choose, and I choose yakiniku."
Kyuubei thinks intently for a moment – then exhales in disappointment, head bowed. "A foolproof argument, Kagura-chan. You made your point in the way that only a true winner would."
"There's no job at all, Gin-san," says Tae. "I can promise you that."
"Then why are you here?" demands Gintoki. "Are you just here to rub it in my face that you're getting yakiniku and I'm not? Because an even better way to do that would be to actually take me to the meal, and then I sit there with you as you eat it, and then I also share in the meal, and then after I've eaten my fill but I greedily reach out to take the last strip of beef anyway, you stop me and say – no, Gin-san, this is for Kagura-chan – except then Kagura-chan gives it to lovable old Gin-san anyway, out of the kindness of her heart, and we all learn a valuable moral about friendship and sharing and buying me yakiniku. Wouldn't that be better?"
"I'd never ever ever times infinity plus one give you the last strip of beef, Gin-chan."
"You're a thankless burden and I've never once known the joys of fatherhood, Kagura-chan."
Tae raises her voice, more politely still. "This isn't a re-run, Gin-san. It's exactly like I said, if you'd only listen and stop mistreating your hard-working employee: Kyuu-chan and I are engaged."
Once again, it's like the clocks stop: Tae speaks, and instantly Kagura and Gintoki are as frozen as unusually aggressive shopfront dummies. Slowly, slowly, each of them turns to peer Tae's way.
"To be married," says Kyuubei, just in case clarification was needed.
"To be married," Tae agrees. She rests her hand fondly atop Kyuubei's on the couch between them. "Thank you, Kyuu-chan."
"I wouldn't want any misunderstandings, Tae-chan."
Gintoki says nothing, though he's studying the pair of them with that particular bland, dead-eyed stare that tends to indicate there's far more activity going on inside his idiot head than usual.
It's Kagura who finds her voice first. "Do you actually want to get married, boss lady?" she demands.
"I do, Kagura-chan."
"To Kyuu-chan?"
"Yes, Kagura-chan."
Kagura's leaning forward on the couch so she can jab her finger between them freely. This time, the jabbing stops at Kyuubei and stays there. "Do you want to because you want to, or has Kyuu-chan dug up another tragic backstory to blackmail you with again?"
"Because I want to, Kagura-chan – and Kyuu-chan didn't blackmail me before, you know; everything I did was of my own free will, even if—"
Kagura speaks over her. "Are you gonna cry about it as soon as you think we're not looking anymore?"
"Definitely not, Kagura-chan."
"Are you gonna cry about it at all?"
"Never, Kagura-chan."
"Hm," says Kagura. She narrows her stare and squints from Tae to Kyuubei and back again, in an ostentatiously suspicious manner that she more than likely picked up from the evening crime serials – and then she huffs again and sits back, arms folded. "That's all from me, then. Over to you, Gin-chan."
The lazy stare passes over them again, lingering; and then Gintoki closes his eyes and lets out all his breath at once, as though maintaining even half-hearted seriousness for all of five minutes has left him entirely exhausted. "Aa, I think that's all from me, too," he says, and when his eyes open again, he's smiling. "Congratulations, you two; will the—"
But at that point Kagura drops the act of a hardened detective and launches herself sideways, diving most of the way over Kyuubei to get to Tae as well, and the explosive noise of her polite congratulations drowns out whatever Gintoki had been trying to say. "Flower girl! Flower girl! I'll frisk all the guests and confiscate their weapons and at the end everyone has to pick a number to see who gets to fight with what, and I'll wear a flower in my hair so they all know I'm the boss, uh-huh, and Shin-chan can videotape it for the internet—"
"Kagura-chan! What the hell do you think a flower girl is?"
"—so you'll have to wear a raincoat, boss lady, to stop the blood getting on your kimono, uh-huh, or Kyuu-chan can carry an umbrella for when it really showers down—"
"Kagura-chan! What the hell do you think a wedding is?"
"Of course you can be a flower girl, Kagura-chan," says Tae, patting the orange head that's nuzzling into her shoulder with the energetic force of a power-drill.
"Is biological warfare permitted, Kagura-chan?" says Kyuubei, contemplating some distant showdown with focused intensity.
"Anything goes," declares Kagura, and yanks both of them into a hug that feels even more like tender, brutal asphyxiation than Kagura's hugs generally tend to.
.-.-.-.
.-.-.-.
Shinpachi meets them at the yakiniku restaurant, summoned by a text from Kagura direct to his emergency Otsuu-chan's Imperial Guards hotline contact number. "Emergency contact," he scolds her, as they're on their way to a table, "that means emergency, Kagura-chan; for example, if Otsuu-chan releases a single that doesn't seem to be on its way to at least the top ten by the weekend, then we need to organise a mass purchase – or if a romantic scandal breaks, or if paparazzi follow her to the beach and bikini shots appear online—"
"Did you know boss lady's marrying Kyuu-chan?" demands Kagura.
Shinpachi breaks off. He nudges up his glasses and looks between them, and says in some surprise, "Well, of course I did."
The restaurant is far more than twice as loud after their arrival. Meat sizzles; sweetcorn sizzles; the edge of Gintoki's yukata sizzles when Kagura dips it experimentally into the grill, and then Kagura nearly sizzles too when Gintoki notices what she's up to.
Shinpachi sets his chopsticks neatly down and interrupts the yelling. "You know, there could be a job in this, Gin-san. I mean – ane-ue, Kyuubei-san, are you planning to have a party after the wedding?"
"The honeymoon is after the wedding," says Kyuubei, very quickly. "Which is traditionally reserved for the bride and groom. Alone. On their own. In private. Just them, with privacy."
Tae reaches across the table and gives Shinpachi's hand a sympathetic pat. "What Kyuu-chan's saying, Shin-chan, is I'm afraid you're not invited."
"I'm not – ane-ue! I know that! I'm not trying to invite myself on your honeymoon!"
Kagura plucks the longest strip of beef from the grill. "Disgusting, Shin-chan."
"You need to sort yourself out before the big day, Patsuan; a sister problem is bad enough at any stage of life, but when your sister is a married woman—"
"Gin-san! Ane-ue, I don't have a sister problem! They're the ones with the sister problem, they've got a problem with my sister, they're the ones who—"
"What were you saying about a job?" remarks Gintoki.
"Ah – ah, yes," says Shinpachi, collecting himself together with a heroic effort of will. He nudges up his glasses and folds his hands on the table before him, assuming his most business-like tone. "Well, if there's a party, then someone has to organise it. And to cater it, and see it all goes smoothly, and clear up after it – and if ane-ue and Kyuubei-san are looking for someone to sort that out, and if we're looking for work – which we are, because we always are – but especially because we're down to our last roll of toilet paper, and last time we ran out of toilet paper you both started using bedsheets from the clean laundry I'd only just washed and put away, which was—"
"—very warm," announces Kagura, "my butt liked it, and it made my farts smell like fabric softener all day. We should give up on toilet paper and just do that always, Gin-chan."
"What I mean," says Shinpachi, very loudly, "is that ane-ue and Kyuubei-san need a party organised, and maybe the Yorozuya could take that job. Right, Gin-san?"
"But Patsuan is far too slow with the laundry to keep up with our rate of output," Gintoki says heatedly, "we'd have to ration out our dumps beforehand, since we don't have enough bedlinen to go around. It's a pity, Kagura-chan," he says, and sighs as though the responsibility he bears is so burdensome it exhausts him just to think of it, "but for day to day it's just not practical."
"Gin-san!"
"Aa, you're right, Gin-chan. We'll have to save it for special occasions, uh-huh, like the weekend, and some weekdays, and whenever else we feel like it."
"Kagura-chan! Are you even listening to me? Is anyone listening? Am I still here?"
"Ah? What is it, Patsuan? You know, 'tomato' isn't a healthy colour for any young boy to be, and you don't even have the excuse of fashion; it's much more stylish to focus on neutral shades this season. Take a deep breath and lose the tomato, that's what I'd recommend."
"I heard if you eat just one carrot it turns your entire body orange forever, Gin-chan. You don't think Pachi's been eating his vegetables, do you?"
"Absolutely not, Kagura-chan – I know Shinpachi-kun would never betray me like that. I raised him right, just like I raised you right, and if there's one message I've always worked my hardest to pass on to the next generation, it's to stay away from eating filth that grows in dirt and animal crap."
"How is – Gin-san! How is eating vegetables a betrayal? I eat vegetables every day! Even you eat—"
"Tae-chan," says Kyuubei, very softly.
"I know, Kyuu-chan," says Tae – though with her hand pressed to her mouth, struggling to hold down her rising, helpless laughter, it doesn't come out so much soft as it comes out muffled. Kyuubei's smiling down at the table with a look Tae doesn't even need to see to know it's there; she can feel it, a beacon of the same perfect contentment as her own.
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[A.N.: This fic was destined to happen from the moment I thought 'rewatching the Yagyuu arc would probably be a bad idea', then went ahead and did it anyway, and left myself a) permanently emotionally compromised, b) unable to think about anything except a happily and mutually requited reprise... so inevitably I wrote it. Chapter two (of three) should be up very soon, and any comments would be appreciated!]