A/N: this fic will probably be romance based not so much of comedy. I mean there will be as it is Gintama but just think of it as if it's a more sober arc with some humor slipped into it to ease the angst I guess. Takes place after the Four Devas somewhere near there maybe if you want a timeline.
Maybe breaking the fourth wall jokes and a play of puns with anime and manga references but this is mostly for the lack of Hijikata/Otae. It's a guilty pleasure to be frank and there aren't many stories. And the subtle moments between them made me do it haha…
Always Bring an Umbrella Even if it's Sunny!
This day, Hijikata has been looking forward to in dreading.
From the crack of dawn is when he puts on his uniform and it bears a heavier burden on him. Which he lives just fine with and goes through the honor codes with his men so they would stay in the guidelines and if not, would be to kill the individual by disembowelment, by his own hand as well as being alive throughout to the final moments.
On a strict regimen men go out into town to their assignments as he had stayed to attend to things in the head quarters.
When eating brunch, the blandness of the rice combated with the unappetizing taste of ordinary miso soup; he smokes instead of eating.
Amongst the Shinsengumi they could all can tell when the second commander was is in a rotten mood and he doesn't mask it as it trundles off in waves. While they make their way around him he's is fixated near the smoking receptacle as he goes through a third of the pack in one standing.
When going by, Kondo backs up and stands by the man.
"Toshi don't you think that's bad for you?" Kondo commented as the man then moved on to a mayo tube after smoking. What the man consumed was a detriment to most sane people, but it didn't make him stop.
Screwing off the cap and eating it as if it's a beverage he offs it in a record time.
"Hasn't killed me yet," Hijikata said as he swallows on the mixture of smoke and carbs.
When he goes off without a word Kondo knows what his friend is going through and where he's going to if not at this very moment. He'd let him be.
Work is what he can and can't do at the moment. Taking his calligraphy brush he pushes it down into rather than onto the paper, too long and it goes through the back of the paper. That's the nth time when he gives up, as he crumples it up and it's on the floor in copious amounts.
Changing out of his uniform as he hadn't really managed anything besides attempting work, he gets into his kimono and doesn't bother to have his sword. He doesn't need it today.
Already it was mid afternoon near where people would be eating lunch and generally lazing around afterwards, as time did fly when being unproductive. As he walks down the streets he doesn't let himself think until he's there. Forecasts had said that it would be sunny for the whole week but it's not; clouds dark and ominous.
Then he's in a cemetery kneeling down to.
Mitsuba Okita is engraved on it and underneath it.
Rather than being buried in the countryside beaters to home, she had instead been buried at a cemetery as her brother as he had made the arrangements. Also, it's the one his brother is resting at.
It seemed he couldn't get away from his past.
The funeral was quaint and as nice as any funeral he had been to. Which was something he'd never thought he could say about. From that, he knows it was Mitsuba that had made it nice as death wasn't. When she was in the open casket adorned with saccharine nectared flowers no one would have suspected the suffering she had to go through with the complacency that was on her face.
Hijikata doesn't speak and instead thinks.
Her funeral had been a while back and he was here because it had been exactly one year before her passing.
Radically in that one year so much had changed but he hadn't. With his habits and work everything was the same but the world wasn't. It's infuriating, really, of his progression or lack of.
While he would have done the customary things when visiting a grave but it had seemed someone already had, incense still alight and the memorial is already scrubbed on and would be again by the rain that had begun to come down.
This is a sadness he can't cope with, healthily. When it came to her it wasn't.
When they—or rather he was, just a simpleton, she had been one of the first to reach out to him. Someone that didn't view him as someone to be feared but someone to be befriended. It was then that he had fell in love with her when she had brought out her hand to his with a greeting and smile of 'let's be friends.'
Within the time that he had taken her hand he couldn't go back. Neither could she.
They couldn't deny being just friends when they both knew and we're just in suspension and that's when he began to distance himself and she was left to catch up to him.
Rejecting her confession though he desperately wanted to confess himself. With no words said, not even at her funeral when she was put to rest and not even now when he had so many still.
He drowns in his thoughts as the rain comes down to the earth harder than it had ever been that day.
—
Raindrops are on her umbrella as she's walking back with her häagen daz nicely in a convenience bag and she hums cheerful despite the dreary day and that her wooden sandals were clogged with liquefying dirt that would take a while to wash out.
Everyone is huddled under a umbrella, many couples trying to squeeze under the limited room and laughing at what couples laughed at which was themselves and she pays no mind as she makes her way home.
It's not that she isn't paying attention when she does walk into someone that makes her umbrella go askew as well as her. Making sure she hadn't land in a puddle, she's pretty sure she had been muddied though but all that matters is her ice cream which is—
On the ground. Spilled. The cream is mixing with the water and dirt and can't be salvaged. It had been the last one and in a bulk size. Anger in her, more so in her stomach, she was going to the person to give them earful or a beating but she doesn't when she sees them.
Rain is on her as it was coming down more rapidly but the person in front of her was drenched in water, as if taking a swim in the river.
"Hijikata-san? What are you doing in this weather!" The man was immersed in water and doesn't seem affected at all, dull to the world. She'd seen this once or twice that's similar to when Gintoki is lost in thought but on him it's scary. Especially what had happened a few weeks ago.
Though it was over and dealt with she'd remember how beaten up he had been.
Defeated even.
Eyebrows that are drawn together in a serious glare at the world, it must be a pain to be like that all the time she thinks.
"Oh Otae…" he says when he moves his head to her so he looks at her, not really there, and then it's silent besides the torrential rain.
"Hello? Did aliens abduct you and do some weird memory wipe?" Then again they're both in a unrealistic anime action filled world—
Tempted to wave her hand in front of his face, she thinks against it because he is completely out of it. As she had dropped her umbrella that's between them, people were walking around the two but shooting them looks until someone actually voiced themselves, she picks it up and raises it over his head. Both are now thoroughly soaked through the clothes, more so he is and her arm is already straining from the height difference.
Strangely he doesn't reply to her and she clears her throat so maybe he will. He doesn't.
—
"Would you like to come over to my house?" When there's no answer she does stamp on his toes that make him yelp.
Downwards, Hijikata grimaced at the woman who's expectantly looking at him and she repeats herself with more force.
If looks could commit murder…
This wasn't a day where he was in the mood for this but she practically gives him an infamous death stare.
Annoyed, he agrees and they're both ambling under the umbrella miserably as she tries to cover both of them.
"Don't bother, I'm a lost cause," he tells her but she has a determination in her eyes that tell him otherwise. Well he couldn't stop her and what was the point in trying to?
They're at her dojo and he makes himself as comfortable as he can in his soaked through clothing that's probably getting into her tatami matting, very wet where it'll get wood rot, as she's boiling tea in the kitchen. Going elsewhere she brings him a steaming towel from the washer she had spun to make it toasty while waiting for the tea leaves to brown and lose flavoring.
"Thank you." Mandatory, he says it and there isn't any significance in it really.
Then they're both sitting on the floor, a table between them as she stares at him and while he stares off into space.
While he didn't even light a cigarette yet, it's then that something was wrong.
The young girl had no idea what the man is going through but had to ask. Awkward she makes small talk. So she tiptoes to the subject of weather before she goes in with what was to be subtle:
"Why were you so…" she can't find what she wants to say next and the towel that he's occupied with is around his shoulders heating him more than it should be getting him dry.
"So what?" He challenges and tries to look as authoritative as he can in his wet kimono. If he'd had his uniform on it would make him more brought a sense of identity with it.
Of what he wanted to be but couldn't at least not now.
"Out of it? Lost?" She supplies him and that has him too. He tries to offer her an excuse but he can't and just sighs.
"At the grave of the woman I love."
That would be suffice enough.
"Ah. Ah—?" The second one is when she completely hears it and she peers at him. Confuddled she leans back as if to take in what he had said. "Uh…"
He hadn't spoken of it to anyone and he wasn't going to with her.
"Forget it." Rifling through the inner clothing to find his cigarette box he plucks out one of them. "Oh do you have anything spicy to eat?"
Waterlogged the whole packet is from him just standing in the rain but it doesn't really bother him. What bothers him is that his lighter won't light and the fact that she's ogling him. Hijikata guesses that he wouldn't get to have anything spicy.
For Tae she didn't even think that Toshiro Hijikata had someone to love. No less she had thought he and Gintoki were gay for each other from the amount of fan related things they had and how much they bickered like a senile old couple that wanted the other to die to have the whole bed to themselves. Well—maybe not to that extent but still.
"I'm sorry," she says after a while and it's all she can say. "I don't have anything spicy." When saying that, she felt as if she were apologizing for something else.
Minutes go by and she's uncomfortable, the rain from the outside not a comforting sound anymore. Then again when the thunder had begun it never was. The teapot shrieks and that causes her to jump at it more than the lightning and the amplification of it.
Excusing herself she thinks of what that man had said and what exactly was he going through.
Rummaging around for the good china cups, she finds another topic to talk about and maybe she can give him some leftover food that is in the fridge—
Awaiting her is an empty table and an equally empty seat, and there's a towel that is folded neatly in place.
It's wasteful as she drained the cooled tea that had been left there overnight.
The rain hadn't disappeared yet.
A/N: Also (O)tae - Tae is her name and Otae is like in a honorific? Correct me if I'm wrong...
This is the shortest thing I have written and I might add onto this or not.
R&R and maybe I will, who knows?
EDIT: the more fleshing out on Mitsuba was from me reading the wonderful works by love at third sight which have fantastic Hijikata/Mitsuba, Gintoki/Tsukuyo, Zenzo/Sarutobi one-shots and such! I highly suggest checking them out and the author!