A/N: Thanks for all the wonderful reviews for my previous Gintama fanfictions, they really encouraged me to write more for this fandom and especially for HijiTae pairing, which I assumed no one cared about. Not beta-ed this time, apologies for all possible mistakes.
She wakes up to an empty house.
It is already past noon and naked rays of sun come inside through the open door. Shin-chan opened them, when he was leaving for work he never got paid for. She would be worried about thieves coming through, if there was actually something to steal. She sits and her head spins, but it does not hurt and champagne effects went away long time ago. For a short while she sits still, searching for the faintest sound of another person's breathing in the house. It has become daily routine, but today it seems there is not one person creeping in the wardrobe or under the terrace. There is rarely more than one person, except from those delightful days when someone comes for a brief visit. Everyone in this town seems to have at least one stalker. Yet both the stalker and the stalked one are strangely accustomed to this quaint situation. She is accustomed as well. She breathes in and out and blinks away red and black circles in front of her eyes. Accustomed does not equal fine with it, never did and never will.
She slowly stands up and avoids the mirror in the corner, for she forgot to remove make-up once again and after the night spent in the club the reflection would certainly not be flattering. She reaches for the dressing gown and pretends to overhear the sound of knocking on the front door. She wants coffee and there are only two people in the world whose presence she would be able to accept before morning cafe, and one of them has nice neat grave on the nearby cemetery and the other is probably in the middle of cooking lunch for never not-hungry alien girl and useless lazy slacker. Knocking continues in annoyingly irregular pattern. She pins up her hair and ignores bathroom visit. Whoever is by the door, her morning breath is small pay for disturbing her so soon.
She knows the visitor.
That is why she walks so slowly, one step at a time. If it was Gintoki, it would be necessary to hurry, for he never bothers with something as mundane as door and would already be raging through the pantry. The same for Kagura, except in this case it would be already too late to save anything besides sugar and salt. Tsukuyo shows up once in a while, but Yoshiwara operates on the same biorhythm as she does. And Kondou-san never bothers with announcing himself before entering the house as well, but that is somehow expected.
She slides the front door open and notes to herself that cigarette stench so early in the morning is even less welcome than the person carrying it. It is certainly not helping that said person also includes the uniform of her stalker's unit, slightly disgusting traces of mayonnaise on its collar and in the corner of his mouth and warm, sad eyes uncomfortably unfitting with the rest. Similar uncomfortableness rests upon his face and she wonders whether it has something to do with her herself or the fact she looks like hungover panda. He shifts and she unconsciously mirrors his movements until the question of the reason of his visit is so emergent that it could be as well shouted out.
,,Shimura-san," he says and she is so not used to such title that she is ready to inform him that her father is, in fact, late for about five years already. People usually call her Otae, Ane-ue or Hey You. "I am coming in the authority of Shinsengumi, to continue with the investigation of the break-in to your residence yesterday evening." His voice is sleepy and grumpy and it takes her about a minute to realize that there was an actual crime in her house yesterday and about one and half minute to connect it with open door to her bedroom and suspicious lack of Kondou Isao in the estate.
"I doubt there is much to investigate," she smiles with her best poisonous smile. He manages not to look scared, possibly because the outlook of being beaten by Shimura Tae is still incomparably more pleasant that investigating crime obviously committed by his own boss.
"Formal procedures," he explains. If anyone else was in his place, saying this, it would sound apologetically; but he never apologizes for anything, and certainly not for the foolish deeds of his mentor. He brings up some papers and unconsciously licks mayonnaise from his mouth. It is strange how considerably less human did that make him, she thinks and stares at him and hopes he does not notice. What he probably does not, since he is too preoccupied with making up some poor explanation for Shinsengumi captain's presence on the crime scene in the time of crime that he could scribble to those documents.
"I was not at home," she says, because the silence is awkward. Wind ruffles his hair, but it does not help, because his eyes are now fixed on papers and without them he looks disturbingly like marble statue. "I know," he replies. Silence is back. "Is there any damage?" she asks, partly because she really has no idea what happened. "No," he replies. She is fully aware of the fact that break-ins to houses are rarely damage-less, and that if there was any damage, he does not seem in the mood to inform her. This is where our taxes go, she remembers favourite phrase of Kabukicho citizens concerning Shinsengumi and almost breaks into laugh, because one of them broke into her home and the other one is just openly lying to her and she does not give a damn. Accustomed, yes, she is, they all are.
He hands her papers to sign and looks cravingly to the direction of cigarette automats and their fingers touch. She half expects them to be marble-cold, half friendly warm and each one of possibilities would prove her some point about Hijikata Toushirou, though in this moment she is unsure what that point would be exactly. His hand is normal temperature though, nothing remarkable, and she is disappointed in her morning haze. There is no mystery revealed, he is just a man with slightly distorted past and slightly irrational people around him. Gintoki's hands are cold, always cold and he laughs and makes jokes about bad circulation (is that even a joke matter?), Shin-chan's are warm, maybe from all the manual work and who knows about the principles of blood circulation of Yato clan. Whatever was inside Hijikata grew accustomed to temperature of normal humans, she thinks and right after that realizes that none of the aforementioned could be described as normal. She finishes signing and hands papers back to him, carefully avoiding the touch. He does not seem to notice. She feels unreasonably sad, as if there was something she waited her whole life for and it turned out that while she was waiting, it had turned into something not worth waiting. What is ridiculous, because this is just a policeman standing before her, nicotine-addict bachelor soon to blend into the grey street.
She invites him for a coffee and feels relieved when he promptly declines.
She comes back alone to an empty house. She is fine with it.